UKFI.gov.uk website hit by hack

The website of UK Financial Investments Ltd (UKFI), an organisation set up to manage the government's investments in UK banks, is back online after being hacked.

The site was displaying a message seemingly left by Albanian cybercriminals over the weekend.

The hacked webpage read: "Status: HackeD. Albanian Corrupt IceCr4cKeR, Foxi, L2H4X. Reason :never liked goverments [sic]".

"Upon visiting the site, some nifty coding minimises your browser, then makes it fly around the screen while a rap tune plays in the background," said Christopher Boyd on the Vitalsecurity.org blog.

Though the UKFI.gov.uk site is now back to normal, albeit slow to load, the search result for UKFI on Google currently still contains IceCr4cKeR's tag.

A UKFI spokesman told Web User: "Security on the site was briefly breached, however this was only a temporary glitch and normal service was returned very soon after."

UKFI was set up in November 2008 to manage the government's investments in banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Bradford & Bingley.

At the time, HM Treasury said: "The government's intention is to get the British banking system back on its feet, protect consumers and homeowners, and ultimately to return banks in full to the private sector. UKFI, operating at arm's length and on a commercial basis, is the best way to achieve this."