The Callaway County Sheriff website is down after the department's webmaster found strong evidence indicating the site was hacked last week.
A generic picture of a computer was found on the press release section of the site, which Callaway County Lt. Clay Chism said was not embedded into the site itself. There have been small indications that the site has been hacked three times in the last six months, but this was the first incident that provided a solid indication of a hacker, he said.
The site does not contain any information that could be considered confidential, as the department doesn't put anything on the site that isn't considered public information, Chism said. The department hasn't suffered any financial loss or a breech in sensitive information - Huber and Associates, Inc. is responsible for managing the department's internal record system.
"It's a very sophisticated record management system," Chism said.
The department's webmaster has taken the site down to work on its firewall and other security measures to ensure it can't be hacked again. However, since the department doesn't have the resources to hire a full-time webmaster a deputy volunteered to work on the site during his time off, Chism said, which means the site could be down for several weeks.
"I think the motive was to create more of an inconvenience than anything," Chism said.
While the webmaster reviews the site's security system, he will attempt to determine how the site was hacked and the origin of where the hacking took place, Chism said.