Yorkshire site defaced by angry local

The Web site of a North Yorkshire town was defaced this week by a enraged local computer cracker intent on wreaking terrible revenge on the locality.

The cracker defaced the front page of the www.ripon.co.uk, a site belonging to the 1400-year-old Yorkshire town of Ripon, with abusive messages about the place. According to Yorkshire Web company Vital, which hosts the non-profit Web site, the incident occurred after a malicious individual gained access to a username and password required to upload the site's front page.

Significantly altering the usually welcoming tone of the Web site, the intruder described Ripon as a "shit place full of drug pushers."

A spokesman says that because this is a non-profit, community maintained Web site, access is less restricted and this is an unfortunate consequence of that situation. "Analysis of all the information so far has indicated that it was performed by someone who had access to a username and password. This is the risk of getting into this sort of project."

The spokesman says that security has since been reviewed and access rights to the site will me more rigidly controlled. For the moment all access has been suspended. This defacement follows another politically motivated attack on central government sites in August and July.

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