Strathclyde Police was forced to close down its website last night amid fears it had come under attack from Chinese hackers.
The site went down soon after 6pm when a number of weblinks appeared that diverted users to a Chinese site with a history of distributing computer viruses.
The force said that anyone who logged into the system yesterday would not have put their own computer at risk.
Spokesman Rob Shorthouse said: “This matter is being investigated by our IT engineers. We have, as a precaution, taken the website offline. No other IT systems have been affected.”
Internet users attempting to access the site encountered a black-and-white screen with a message that the website was “down for maintenance”.
The purpose of the attack, in which hackers inserted a malicious code on to the home page and several other key pages, remains unknown.
