The Scottish Game Fair website has been targeted by Iranian hackers, just three weeks before thousands of people come to Perthshire for the event.
The game fair, organised by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, is one of the leading events in Scotland’s rural calendar, attracting a record 36,000 visitors last year.
This year’s event takes place in the grounds of Scone Palace from July 2 to 4.
The website is back up and running after round-the-clock efforts to rebuild it.
It was “hijacked,” explained Hugo Straker, chairman of the Scottish Game Fair.
“Instead of our usual home page we had a garbled message from the hacker and Iranian flags,” he said.
“The message, when translated, said that this group selects target websites at random and hacks them just for fun.
“We were obviously far from amused. It sounds like it should have been an easy problem to solve but a bomb went off somewhere in our system and it has taken a lot of effort to put the site back together as quickly as possible.
“Our security is good, and our passwords are randomly generated, but we were obviously an attractive, high-profile target.
“We would rather welcome our Middle Eastern visitors to the fair in person rather than electronically in this way.
“Tickets for the fair can also be bought online from www.scottishgamefair.com in advance and it is obviously also an important channel for us to give members of the public information about the fair.
“While the site was down we beefed up our Facebook presence too and we will continue to post our latest information and news on the Scottish Game Fair Facebook page.”
Photo under under Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user TGIGreeny.