Registrar General’s Website Hacked By Someone Who Can’t Spell ‘Hack’

Looks like someone’s Passport was delayed one too many days and they decided to hack the Registrar General’s website or perhaps it’s a disgruntled employee?

The hack is just one of those nuisance hacks. Perhaps someone who thinks it’s cool and wants to brag to their friends that they are a ‘genius.’

Before we talk about the hack

Eish, the RG’s website loads terribly slow. Zim government websites really need to improve. Secondly, the website that states that ‘security is paramount’ in the first paragraph on the homepage has no SSL certificate. It’s an insecure website!

The hacker and their spellings

On the homepage of the RG’s website you will find the latest news section looking like this:

The first article there reads “Hacked” and the second one says “Heked.” Probably the hacker did not know which spelling was the right one and they decided to use both.

Opening any of the two articles reveals a page with this:

The spelling on ‘Fack admin’ there is also interesting. One of the pages where this is appearing has that same dubious spelling for ‘hacked’ at the top:

RG Department’s fault

This nuisance hack is the RG department’s fault. They just put up a website for the sake of it. It was built using some open source Joomla templates and some of the template content was just left like this. Here is what their ‘About Us’ page looks like:

You see this same thing when you go to download a passport application form or to apply for Zimbabwean citizenship. This is just not cool. It just tells you how the website is taken for granted and has no one caring for or about it at all.

Sadly, this is the general attitude you see when it comes to government websites and all things IT in government really. What should we expect really with the caliber of folks that are appointed to the highest office dealing with ICT policy?