Paul Brady's website amongst those targeted by Kurdish hackers

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) was forced to shut down its website yesterday morning.

The Irish Times also writes that Minister of State for Tourism and Sport Patrick O'Donovan, Enterprise Ireland, Irish Distillers, and the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics were all hacked by a perpetrator known as "MuhmadEmad".

Most of the sites were altered to feature a Kurdish flag and the statement "long live Peshmerga", referring to the Kurdish army of the anti-Islamic State located in Iraq.

Several European sites, including Brussels-based technology website ZDnet, were also hit.