US city website hacked in Napster protest

US prosecutors are investigating the hijacking of a local government website in which a hacker replaced the front page with a plea to save Napster, the music swapping site.

Byron West, director of TV and internet services for the city and county of Denver, Colorado, said the attack was discovered shortly before midnight on 3 October. According to West, there was no damage to the city's website or its data but the site was taken offline for more than nine hours.

The attacker posted a message that said the site was a victim of a "Halloween Hack Attack". The message read: "Save Napster. Napster and its users are growing stronger each day and I will be telling you here how you can help the Napster battle: you can email or snail mail the companies that are against Napster."

West emphasised that hackers attack to get attention. "When the message gets through they've won. It is a criminal activity," she said.

Lynn Kimbrough, a spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney's office, said prosecutors are at the preliminary stages of the investigation. "There is no way to predict what the outcome would be."

Denver revised its state statue regarding computer crimes last year. Under the new law, the loss, damage, value of services or the cost of repair caused by a violation, could range from a misdemeanour to a Class 3 felony. The latter could result in a prison sentence and fines of up to $15,000.

"How serious the crime depends on the extent to which it was altered and how difficult it was to restore," said Kimbrough.

She believes attacks of US city systems are rare. "The only other case reported to this office included the Colorado secretary of state's office, which is still under investigation but points to a former employee of the secretary's office."