NSW Govt ousts web developer over security breach

The NSW Government has terminated its relationship with the developers of the state's transport blueprint website after they admitted a security lapse - rather than hack - was the cause of a document leak.

Transport minister David Campbell sought to make "a brief clarifying statement" to state parliament late yesterday after causing a storm Tuesday with allegations that a major newspaper had hacked into the website, which was under construction.

He read a statement from the developers Bang The Table in which they admitted "areas of the site were temporarily accessible by the use of internal web page addresses."

"This is a matter of significant embarrassment to us," the company said.

"While security was in place on the front page of the site, clearly it was not sufficient to prevent the internal content being accessed."

Campbell told parliament that the Government had "lost confidence" in the company and would terminate its relationship.

"It is now clear that Bang the Table not only did not protect the security of the Government's information, it also provided wrong advice to the Government about its security measures," Campbell said.

"This is completely unacceptable to the Government."

He apologised to parliament and called on Bang The Table to do the same.

Bang The Table still maintained that a hack on the website had been attempted and that the matter was with NSW Police.