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The Minister Responsible For The Census Now Appears To Have Been Hacked

MP Michael McCormack's website is down.
Michael McCormack's site is down for maintenance.
Fairfax
Michael McCormack's site is down for maintenance.

The minister who said the #CensusFail was not an attack or hack on Tuesday night appears to have had his own website hacked on Wednesday night.

Minister for Small Business Michael McCormack's website was down for maintenance on Wednesday night, after the MP spent his morning defending the 'denial of service' attack or event (depending on who you ask).

On Wednesday afternoon McCormack's website appeared to have an out-of-place link on the homepage labelled "gay sex".

The event is just the latest of controversies to embroil the 2016 Census, which left millions of Australians unable to complete the national survey online after the website was shut down at about 7:45pm on Tuesday night following the denial of service.

Minister Michael McCormack's official website on Wednesday night.
Michael McCormack
Minister Michael McCormack's official website on Wednesday night.

McCormack has been one of the officials defending the #CensusFail on Wednesday, with Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security Alastair MacGibbon explaining it was in fact an attack because it forced the ABS to shut down the website for precautionary measures.

"A range of agencies [are] working with our offshore counterparts to try to determine who might be behind it," MacGibbon told the ABC's 7:30 Report.

"There's a range of nation states and non-state actors, including someone that wants to show they're smarter than us, that could have carried out this type of attack."

MacGibbon said no data was hacked or lost. But for more about the #CensusFail click here.

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