Scary

Someone hacked into the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's website and inserted a photograph of a nuclear explosion — spurring the agency to call in the RCMP.

The commission said the media releases section of its website was vandalized by the hacker. However, a spokesman emphasized that a person without a secure government login would not be able to access potentially dangerous information — such as part of the agency's internal site that tracks the movement of high-risk radioactive sealed sources.

According to a report in Thursday's Ottawa Citizen, the commission's current and archived news releases were renamed "security breaches" and contained a photo of a mushroom cloud.

The photo was under the heading "for Immediate Release" and was accompanied by a caption reading: "Please dont [sic] put me in jail … oops, I divided by zero."

Commission spokesman Aurèle Gervais confirmed the defacement of the site and said the pages were disabled minutes after the newspaper contacted the agency.

Gervais said the vandalism occurred on a part of the agency's site run by an external provider with no link to the internal site.