The beara.com website, which advertises self-catering accommodation and hotels,
has mysteriously acquired attachments to XXX-rated porn sites.
These include access to hardcore porn movies and contacts with swingers and
fetishists.
Castletownbere-based county councillor Noel Harrington said he would be making
a complaint to the gardaí and would ask them to try to block the site.
Nearly two years ago to the day, villagers in Allihies, with a population of
fewer than 100, discovered that their parish website had been hacked by
pornographers.
One of the items that caused particular revulsion was a webcam stripogram that
featured a very young woman.
In fact the female was so young it was felt that she may be a minor and gardaí
were called in.
Computer experts from the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation worked with the
designer of the original Allihies website and managed to close down
transmission of the offending material.
The Beara Peninsula website isn't the first tourist-orientated one to be hacked
in this country.
The website www.castlebar.com was hijacked and viewers were propelled into porn
sites.
The porn hacker in the latest case is believed to be in Seoul, South Korea.
"I'm very disappointed the Beara area has again fallen victim to this kind of
hijacking again," said Mr Harrington.
Websites become particularly vulnerable to hackers if their owners cease to
update their sites on a regular basis.
"I will be asking the gardaí to follow this up and hopefully they will be able
to block it and restore the good name of Beara," said Mr Harrington.
Beara villagers are in good company when it comes to having their website
hijacked: the same has happened in the past to the US's Boston Philharmonic
Orchestra, the Dutch government, the United Nations and the US Department of
Education.
