Hacking, said a spokeswoman for Eircom, was "part of Internet life". And although the degree of site-hacking is difficult to quantify, even those one might assume would be the most secure in the world have been breached, some several times.
In January both the University of Limerick website and the site of a telecommunications company, Telenor, were breached. The homepages of each were defaced and continued to be displayed for more than 12 hours.
Outside Ireland, January victims included the Ministry for Industrial Development site run by the Colombian government and the US Library of Congress site. In December the Californian Democrats site was breached, as were those of the Californian Department of Forestry, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Chinese National Library and a Taiwanese government site.
Mr David Sinclair, a lecturer in computer applications at Dublin City University, says the majority of hackers are not acting maliciously.
NATO's sites are breached regularly. One hacker early last year provided the Alliance with a new homepage. "NATO," it proclaimed, "Asses away from Serbia! To Adolf Clinton: **** out, loser!! Go **** Monica!"
Signing him or herself the Russian Hackers Union, the hacker concluded: "Russian hackers demand to stop terrorist aggression against Yugoslavia!"
