CAO website hit by second attack

ANOTHER cyber-attack on the technical system of the Central Applications Office (CAO) caused the system to automatically issue new account passwords to more than 22,000 applicants by email.

Following Monday’s debacle, whereby the CAO website was inaccessible for much of the morning, yesterday saw more issues arise causing IT staff to shut down the interactive ‘my application’ section following another attack from an unknown source.

The office also had to disable the ‘forgot password’ facility, as, according to the CAO, it had been subject to a “malicious attack”. Joseph O’Grady, CAO operations manager, apologised to anyone who was inconvenienced and thanked them for their patience.