X-rated find on Aussie island tourism website after suspected hacking

The tourism page for one of Australia’s most popular island holiday destinations has been flooded with a series of X-rated articles.

Anyone checking out the website for Australia’s Lord Howe Island today may have gotten a very rude shock, after the page was flooded with X-rated articles.

Lord Howe Island is located off the coast of Port Macquarie in NSW and is one of Australia’s most popular island holiday destinations.

However, there appeared to have been some difficulties with the official tourism website for the island this morning, after a number of articles appeared on the page referencing things like dating apps, sex acts and even links to pornographic websites.

It appears the articles have since been deleted from the website, but not before they were screenshot and shared to a popular meme Facebook group.

When opening the page’s “menu” section, a headline appeared saying: “26 year old man dating 35 year old woman”.

The strange links and articles appeared on the website this morning. Picture: Facebook

There were multiple articles about dating. Picture: Facebook

Under that heading were two links, one referencing online dating and the other much more X-rated, referring to a dating app for a specific sex act.

Clicking on the links brought up articles, with one titled “How to date a younger woman without being the worst”.

Under that was another title, “How to build wealth through real estate”, before the article launched into a bizarre tirade about dating.

The author claimed: “It is OK for men to be look (sic) women young enough to be their daughters but if the genders are reversed, the older woman is just a booty call”.

They also claimed they had a “21-year-old guy” interested in them, stating they were in their 30s.

The pages have since been taken down from the website. Picture: Facebook

Some of pages reference casual sex and others had links to porn websites. Picture: Facebook

Another article related to creating a tinder profile with the text stating: “And if you are in the game, don’t you want to play with the best?”.

“Tinder is simple, quick, fun and free – and everyone seems to be doing it,” the post said.

Another headline referred to a dating app for a sex act, with the description filled with expletives and X-rated references.

Another page touted “No strings sex apps for 40+ women who want casual sex”.

Some of the pages were more X-rated than others. Picture: Facebook

The X-rated pages appear to be the work of a hacker. Picture: Facebook

It appears the content appearing on the website may have been the result of hackers, with one Facebook user posting a conversation they had with the official Visit Lord Howe Island Instagram page.

The user sent the page a screenshot of one of the articles, with a staff member replying that they were “hacked” and are “in the process of investigating”.

News.com.au has contacted the tourism website for comment.

A spokeswoman for the website told The Daily Telegraph that IT specialists had now neutralised the hack and were monitoring the site.

“As soon as the hack happened we were alerted to it and our developers jumped in straight away and cleaned it up,” she said.

“We don’t know where it came from or who it was, but it was only visible on mobiles via specific search engines.

“It’s been fixed and we’re closely keeping an eye on it – and we’re just doing what we can to try and prevent future attacks.”

Lorde Howe Island is one of Australia's most popular island holiday destinations. Picture: iStock

This comes as it was revealed that Australians are at an increased risk of being exposed to hackers than the rest of the world, with a worrying spike in data breaches.

The rise in online privacy breaches around the country is defying a global trend where attacks have decreased, according to a quarterly report from data leak detection service Surfshark, released last year.

Surfshark lead researcher Agneska Sablovskaja said the rise could be partly explained by the addition of the 1.75 million email accounts breached in the Medibank cyber attack.

“Globally, data breaches have gone down by 70.8 per cent from October to November,” Ms Sablovskaja said.

“In Australia, however, data breaches have surged by 1550 per cent – from 107,659 in October to 1,776,065 in November.”

The nation might be seen as a “soft target” by international cybercriminals, said Susan McLean, a cyber security expert and former Victoria Police officer from Cyber Safe Solutions.

“It’s often opportunistic offending, they look at what’s out there, how it’s being stored, and they’ll have a crack at most large systems to see how they go,” Ms McLean said. “We know that this is a fast-growing crime, and we know that the offenders are often one step ahead.

“If you retain any data on anyone, this should be a wake-up call to you to make sure that your systems are top notch so you’re not becoming front-page news for all the wrong reasons.”

– With NCA NewsWire