School websites infected by porn spammers

Thousands of school and university websites have become infected by hardcore porn.

Schools have been targeted by "malicious spammers", reports The Daily Telegraph, who are uploading explicit sexual material linked to the schools' websites.

It is said that older versions of the free, open-source software Moodle are being used as a vehicle to infect the sites. Moodle allows teachers and pupils to create interactive websites.

It is reported that previous versions of Moodle software have been cracked by hackers, who are now creating user profiles on the sites to bypass web filters and upload pornography.

Twenty primary schools in Birmingham, for instance, have been infected, and government school technology body Becta has launched an investigation into the problem.