HAINES CITY | People who tried to log on to the city's website Sunday night found themselves looking at a Turkish gaming site instead.
Haines City's government website was hacked into about 10:30 p.m. and taken down as soon as the city's information technology staff was notified, Assistant City Manager Jonathan Evans said Monday.
A group calling itself AYYILDIZIIM-Genç~Reis claimed the credit, or blame, for the hacking that redirected visitors to its website, which Evans said is a Turkish gaming site.
He said because the website is not hosted on city servers, the IT staff could not determine how it was hacked. But he said no information on city servers was compromised.
"We took the website down," Evans said. "We know it's an important communication tool, and we have been working on a reorganized website but this glitch set the plans in motion sooner."
The city had been without a website provider for several months and therefore was vulnerable to a cyber attack, Evans said.
"We will be launching our new website Tuesday or Wednesday," he said Monday. "We hope the residents and guests to the website realize it's a work in progress and it will be far from complete."
Evans said city staff is meeting with its new vendor and will address security concerns.
"That's why we're making the migration to a new website provider," he said. "And we are going to make sure there is a security protocol so this doesn't happen again."
