THE BAR COUNCIL website was the victim of a hacking attack last night.

A spokesperson said that at approximately 8.35pm last night the server that hosts the www.barcouncil.ie website was the victim of an automated attack.

It said the hackers took advantage of a security hole in a WYSIWYG editor that was part of the content management system for the site and replaced the original homepage with one that said: “You has [sic] been hacked by BRWSK007 was here recently.”

The website was soon restored back to normal, said a Bar Council spokesperson.

The server was taken offline within about 15 minutes and the homepage file for the site (which had been overwritten) was restored from a backup. The security issue was patched and the site was back online shortly afterwards.

The spokesperson added:

At no time was any data on the website compromised. The website that hosts the Bar Council website is no way connected with any internal servers belonging to the Bar Council. The attack was not a targeted attack on the Bar council – it was an automated attack that was looking for this particular security issue.