College hack: 'No student data accessed during random attack'

The college's home page was taken down by somebody claiming to be a Kurdish hacker last night, with visitors greeted with an emblem of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the words: "Hacked by PaYwand Abdulla.

"We are all Peshmarga and Ilove Islamic

"\!/ See You Admin #"

A spokesman for the college, based in Blackpool Old Road, told The Gazette this morning: "This tampering appears to have been completely random in nature and had nothing specifically to do with the college.

"Staff worked quickly with the company responsible for hosting the site and the website was quickly restored to its normal state.

"We take the security of our website extremely seriously and will work with the company who created the site, and host it, to put in place further measures to help prevent any repeat of this incident.

"The college would like to apologise to our students, staff, or visitors for any disruption in service."

The college said data relating to students and parents is kept on systems 'entirely separate to our website', and said initial analysis shows the hack only affected the site's homepage.

The spokesman said: "I can confirm that data relating to Blackpool Sixth students and their parents was not accessed in any way.

"It is kept on systems which are entirely separate to our website."

'PaYwand Abdulla' claims to be a Kurdish hacker, while the Peshmerga are militia in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The group, whose name translates as 'those who face death', operate in northern Iraq and are involved in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS).