Cyber porn barons hijack county diocesan website

A DIOCESAN website is the latest victim of cyber porn barons, it emerged yesterday.

Internet users accessing www.cloyne.irl.com discovered rather unholy material which included sexually explicit titles like ‘Get Laid Tonight’ and ‘Real People, Real Sex’.

The Catholic Communications Office confirmed it was completely unaware that the website had been hacked.

It also emerged that the national body did not realise that the Diocese of Cloyne had changed its website from www.cloyne.irl.com to www.cloynediocese.ie.

Cloyne Diocesan website operator Canon Gerry Casey said he was forced to change the website because the original hosting company went out of business.

Once informed of the situation, the Catholic Communications Office updated its website to direct people to the new Diocese of Cloyne website.

A spokesman for the Bishop of Cloyne, Dr John Magee, said he was shocked by the revelation.

“It’s a modern-day problem where people can hijack websites from anywhere in the world. Very often there are links on to our website without us having knowledge of it,” the bishop’s spokesman said.

Hackers specialise in targeting dormant or little-used websites in particular.

Two years ago, the parish website in the west Cork village of Allihies was hacked.

Villagers were shocked to discover they were victims of cyber porn barons and greatly concerned by a webcam stripogram which featured a young woman.

Gardaí were called amid fears that the young woman was a minor and their computer experts managed to clear the parish site of the offending material. The hackers in that case were from America.

Just over a week ago, it emerged that a tourist website highlighting the wonders of the south-west had also been hijacked.

The website, beara.com was infiltrated by hackers based in Seoul, South Korea, who placed porn links on it.