NHS Scotland domains reportedly found serving adult content and illegal sport streams

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A legacy website was apparently compromised and used to promote inappropriate content

A person in a medical practice typing on a laptop.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
  • Legacy NHS Scotland website hacked and defaced
  • Site used to host porn, gambling, and illegal streams
  • No evidence of patient data or NHS systems compromised

The legacy website of a Scottish NHS trust was seemingly hacked and used to distribute pornography, illegal sports streams, and other inappropriate content.

Former cybersecurity expert Nick Hatter took to X to warn the UK government and other relevant parties about a breach at a government website:

“NHSScotland has been hacked and is linking to porn sites, malware, gambling, amongst other nasty things,” he said, before sharing a list of compromised URLs. “Please check your patient records have not been compromised,” he added.

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Defaced website

Investigating the matter further, The Register found the site belongs to The New Surgery in Kilmacolm, near Glasgow, but that it is not the one currently being used by the practice.

The New Surgery's current domain is www.thenewsurgery.scot.nhs.uk, while the compromised one is thenewsurgery-kilmacolm-langbank.scot.nhs.uk. Looking at the website now, it is completely defaced, and carries a large NHS Scotland logo with a short message:

“Due to unforeseen technical issues, the "The New Surgery (Kilmacolm)" website is currently unavailable. We are working to resolve the issues and hope to have the site back up as soon as possible.” Someone has obviously taken notice.

A spokesperson for the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC), Scotland's largest health board and the one that oversees The New Surgery, told The Register its cybersecurity team was now working with Public Services Delivery Scotland's Cyber Centre of Excellence to “support an independent GP practice after being made aware that a legacy website had been compromised.”

“This affects a legacy website that was independently set up and managed by the GP practice, and there is no evidence the practice's primary website, or any NHS Scotland systems locally or nationally, were compromised."

The NHS National Services Scotland (NSS), which administers the scot.nhs.uk domain, said it’s not aware of any personal or sensitive data exposed as a result of the incident. Primary websites, as well as NHS Scotland systems locally and nationally, have not been compromised.

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Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.

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