The official website of the Royal Navy has been shutdown after a hacker managed to infiltrate the site’s security.
A Romanian hacker, known as TinKode, claimed responsibility for the shutdown after obtaining a username and password for the Ministry of Defence run site.
Red faced Navy chiefs were then forced to pull the plug on the pages, fearing that the intruder could have gained access to highly sensitive information on the forces database.
Defence bosses are also facing questions over why the programming fault on the site hadn’t been fixed, despite the problem being known of for over a decade.
A Royal Navy spokesman said that the site was only used for public relations and “no malicious damage had been done” but that the website was temporarily suspended as a “precaution,” adding: “access to this website did not give the hacker access to any classified information.”
It is the second embarrassing blow to hit the service in as many months after their flagship Astute sub ran aground off the coast of Skye.