UK govt dept website that campaigns against encryption hijacked to advertise ... payday loans

A website developed for the UK Home Office's 2022 "flop" anti-encryption campaign has seemingly been hijacked to push a payday loan scheme. The pwn on the government's No Place to Hide campaign, which cost over half a million pounds to produce, was first spotted by tech policy expert Heather Burns. The website originally …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Good marketing?

Would you trust a payday loan company that advertised on the Home Office?

On the other hand this could have been a genuine fund raising policy by the last government. Along with sponsors logos on Police cars.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good marketing?

Payday loan - isn't that how you finance a degree course in the UK nowadays?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good marketing?

Ere… no.

You would get a loan from Student Loans Company and like many (most?)people not end up paying it back in full.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-encryption meant ...

the web site developers had to use telnet and ftp (and presumably http) ...

:-)

On second thoughts more likely rlogin and rcp with hosts.equiv.

[ecofeco]

LOL I love it

Poetic justice never gets old.

Half a million pounds for what should at best be only a few page of simple HTML? I love it when scammers get scammed.

[Blazde]

Re: LOL I love it

It's not just a website. There's a Youtube video that's attracted 1,177 views and 7 subscribers too.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: LOL I love it

That many!?! Now that's what I call impressive outreach.

[IGotOut]

Re: LOL I love it

And the 7 subscriber all work for the same marketing agency.

[teebie]

"a growing trend whereby legitimate, trusted domains and their abandoned web pages are being hijacked"

trusted?

[cipnt]

Aren't you also advertising this payday loan site?

Their SEO team will be very pleased

[Gene Cash]

Is it advertising when you're showing to a group of people probably willing to burn it to the ground?

This is probably the most "anti-audience" I could imagine.

[PB90210]

"Missold a payday loan? You could be owed thousands. Just sign up for our free service..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"We call this a cloned firm and it is typically part of a scam."

Are there any payday loans that AREN'T a scam?

[Pirate Peter]

very secure then

"The Register contacted both the Home Office and Wage Day Loans about the finding on Tuesday June 24, and by very early Wednesday morning on June 25 the payday loans section of the website had been removed. By 0930 UK time on Wednesday, it had re-appeared."

so within hours of the content being taken down it was back!!!!

so they obviously didn't bother patching and securing the website (even the basic change password etc ?)

mind you the hackers obviously didn't do their homework as what's the point of putting a link on such a low traffic site, I suppose could be a referrer link for google rank but won't score much with that

[Richard 12]

Re: very secure then

Likely an automated sweep adding it to every website that's not using end-to-end encryption.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypocrties

"We The Squeaky-Clean Government are allowed e2e for our Important Stuff but you the Sweaty Masses might be naughty sometimes so you are not."

[Anonymous Coward]

Just shows

Clearly we can trust the government with a special “super secret” key. After all, they are experts at securing websites

[Alan Brown]

"All SEO for Wage Day Advance is outsourced, we did not request that link placement and were not aware of it. "

The UK really needs legislation which holds companies responsible for the actions of their contracted advertisers