Bhubaneswar, Jan. 16: Authorities of the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) today lodged complaints with Khandagiri police and the state crime branch in connection with hacking of its website.

Yesterday, the university's website, www.ouat.ac.in, was allegedly hacked by someone, who identified himself as "Don". The hacker had allegedly posted a number of obscene messages on the institute's website, forcing the authorities to remove the contents from the server at the earliest.

"We are investigating whether it is the handiwork of a professional hacker or some mischievous persons. We are also seeking the help of IT experts to crack the case," said deputy commissioner of police Satyabrata Bhoi.

The police are also verifying the Internet protocol (IP) addressees of the hacker from the server.

The matter came to light yesterday after the authorities had found objectionable contents on the website.

"The website had been working properly till 6pm yesterday. As soon as we found that it had been hacked, we deactivated the server," said university dean Santosh Kumar Rout.

The authorities are also suspecting theft of some data from the website. The police said a local IT expert had developed and designed the website.

This is the second incident of hacking of website of government agencies in the past 15 days. On January 3, unidentified hackers had taken control of the Ganjam regional transport office's website www.rtoganjam.com. The crime branch had taken up the case. In that case, the hacker identified himself as Abas Abraham and threatened to freeze the websites of all educational institutes and companies across the country. The hacker also posted slogans such as "Pakistan Zindabad" and "Our aim is independence of Kashmir" on the transport office's website. The Internet protocol of the hacker was later traced to California in USA.

The police said they would also probe if the hacker of the transport office's website was involved in hacking of the OUAT website.

A number of websites of government agencies that are designed and developed by local firms lack a strong audit system and security measures. "These websites are easy targets for hackers unlike websites developed by the National Informatics Centre and other reputed software firms - which are hard to break into," said a senior police officer.