FG website attack compromises personal details of 2,000 people

PERSONAL details of about 2,000 people were compromised in the attack on Fine Gael’s website on Sunday night.

Assistant Data Protection Commissioner Diarmuid Hallinan confirmed the party had been in contact with his office concerning the breach.

“Fine Gael contacted the office concerning the incident and on foot of that we have launched an investigation into the matter.”

Despite Fine Gael stating that the details of just under 2,000 people had been compromised, a journalist with the Evening Herald yesterday claimed on social networking site Twitter that he has been sent the details of 4,000 users of the Fine Gael website following the attack.

The hack is credited to Anonymous, an online protest community which calls itself “a leaderless movement” working tirelessly to oppose internet censorship worldwide.

It replaced the content on the site with a large message stating: “Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you. They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice. WAKE UP!”

The group said it had attacked the site because comments submitted “were being censored,” which, it said, “was terribly dishonest”.

The party changed its main website finegael.ie last week and replaced it with finegael2011.ie which invited readers to submit comments and contact details.

Initially, Fine Gael issued a statement on its website stating the “integrity of all the data collected is still intact and was not accessed at any point by this outside entity.”

However, the party later acknowledged that the details of thousands of posters on the site had been compromised.

“We were alerted this morning that the Anonymous Group was able to secure the database of the information submitted by members of the public during the previous week. This affected just under 2,000 subscribers.

“As a result we have now taken the necessary action to report this hacking crime to the proper authorities including the Data Protection Commissioner and the Gardaí. This morning the party has emailed each of the individuals who submitted their comments and contact data (emails, IP addresses and mobile phone numbers) to the site to notify them of this event. We deeply regret any inconvenience that has been caused to them,” said the statement.

A holding page has been posted on the Fine Gael website www.finegael.ie while the matter is being resolved.