The path to enlightenment got a little shorter for the citizens of Tucson, Arizona and they have a hacker half-way around the world to thank.

An Indonesian man who goes by the handle Hmei7 bypassed the city's firewall and executed a SQL injection on the website of the Tucson Police Department. That gave him access to the media section of the department's site, where he changed the titles of all the media releases to "Hmei7 has touched your soul."

A quick web search suggests the city isn't the first group to be blessed by the web defacer. Indeed, he's also kissed the souls of people in Okaloosa County, Florida, if this press release is to be believed.

Tucson police officials were alerted to the hack two weeks ago, after a website visitor spotted the messages. They took the site down immediately and only managed to bring it back up in the last 24 hours.

No doubt, the two-week disruption came as an inconvenience to some. But we'd argue it was a small price to pay if it leads the way toward Nirvana. ®

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• Another police website hacked (10 June 2008)
• Judge accuses hacks of hacking cannibal ruling (26 February 2008)
• Hacked embassy websites found pushing malware (23 January 2008)
• Turkish s'kiddies deface security forum (17 December 2007)
• Hacker defaces temples to OS X (27 November 2007)
• Cyber-jihad fails to materialise (12 November 2007)
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• Hackers hijack UK.gov wiki (5 September 2006)