Teachers union site falls victim to hacker

The state teachers union got an unwanted lesson in Internet security recently when a Turkish hacker temporarily replaced its main Web page with a picture of the Turkish flag.

Weeks after the attack, the Washington Education Association's home page has been fixed, but much of the content still isn't accessible. An item there reads, "Hackers 1, WEA 0," and links to another page explaining the incident.

The attack also shut down the Web sites of several local teachers union affiliates, including Seattle's.

It appears that the union was the victim of a hacker who broke into and took control of hundreds of sites simultaneously in June, union spokesman Rich Wood said Tuesday.

No confidential information was accessed in the attack, he said, but "it really screwed things up."

It appears that the person was trying to show off, rather than specifically target teachers or steal union members' personal information, Wood said.

Immediately after the attack, visitors to washingtonea.org were treated to a picture of the Turkish flag (red, with a white crescent and star in the center) instead of the union's usual blue-and-gold news template.

Some of the news links on the main page have been restored, but navigation on the site remains limited.

"It basically crashed our whole system," Wood said. "We're still grappling with it and trying to restore our complete Web presence."

He declined to estimate how soon the union's site and affiliate Web sites would be back to normal, except to say "it's taking longer than we'd hoped."