Porn Ads Target CA Secretary Of State Website: Report

Google users looking up the California secretary of state recently were instead directed to PDFs with links apparently connected to the government website that would send visitors to pornography sites, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The pornography links were mixed in with a legitimate secretary of state business services web address, according to the newspaper, which reported a representative for the agency said Friday that the secretary of state’s office had removed several documents in connection with a bad actor who uploaded “non-business documents” to its online business filing system.

An investigation was ongoing and no other secretary of state documents or data were exposed, according to the Times, which reported the bad actor could not immediately be traced.

Journalist and AI researcher Brian Penny alerted the Times to the issue and told the newspaper this is an ongoing problem and that in the span of just weeks, he has tracked dozens of government agencies targeted by pornography, cryptocurrency, video game and other advertisers.

Read more from the Times.