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Irish health site, www.irishhealth.com, had its Web site defaced on Tuesday night, and may have had its servers compromised by a group calling themselves the Silver Lords.
"There was a temporary situation where a piece of artwork was put up on the irishhealth.com site at 8 o'clock on Tuesday night. As far as we know there are no other problems but it is an absolute tragedy that this happens as a result of being a high profile site," said Geraldine Meagan, Managing Director of irishhealth.com.
Meagan said the attack could be due to the fact that the company launched a second wave of promotion of the site in December which raised its profile. The site is now clocking around 200,000 page impressions a month.
The company is now reviewing its security, which is handled in house.
Meagan said the company used RedHat Linux for all its systems which was often less of a target than other systems for such attacks.
She estimated that while 56 percent of sites which came under attack used Windows NT, only 8 percent of the total used Linux software.
Irishhealth carries medical news and general information on all areas of health ranging from children's health to skin and heart conditions. The company is planning to launch a health professional's section within the next six to nine months carrying educational news and information for doctors and nurses.
Another Irish medical site, Doctor To Doctor (www.d2d.ie), is to introduce a new Doctor-Alert service which will start on 1 February. The free service is aimed at informing doctors about urgent issues, such as drug withdrawals, vaccine recommendations, important clinical trial results, and local disease outbreaks. It will be available as an e-mail service and the company is planning to offer the alert via WAP and SMS soon.
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