A travel reservations Web site used by several US federal agencies was hit earlier this month by hackers, who shunted unsuspecting users off to a malicious domain. The site, GovTrip.com, remained unavailable late last week.
According to an e-mail sent to federal workers by the General Services Administration, the site was breached before February 11. The agency did not say when the site will be back online.
A GSA spokesman last week said that "the incident was quickly identified." He declined to disclose details, citing an ongoing investigation into the hack.
The GSA e-mail, however, said that the hackers modified GovTrip.com to redirect users to a rogue URL that launched attack code into their systems.
The spokesman did say that no user information is believed to have been compromised. The site is operated by Northrop Grumman.
GovTrip is used by several US government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy, Interior, Transportation, Treasury, and Health and Human Services departments.
The spokesman said that the affected departments, the GSA and Northrop Grumman are working "to identify short-term and long-term measures to find the source of the incident and to prevent such an incident from recurring."
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