Western Australian Government websites defaced

The Western Australian Government came under attack from hackers who defaced nine of its websites in two days, including the Government House and the City of Perth earlier this month.

The defacements were commonly SQL injection attacks, a kind of attack that is considered by many to be a low-level threat.

But the attacks follow the discovery of prolific web and application vulnerablilities in a scathing report into lax security standards of Western Australian hospitals and government departments by the state Auditor General. The vulnerablilities can be exploited to deface websites and access core networks. Critical vulnerablilities were found in seven prominent departments investigated in the report.