[Updated, July 6, 2017, 11:45 a.m.] The West Hartford Police Department’s Detective Division is investigating a threatening message that appeared on the Town of West Hartford’s website.

By Ronni Newton

The Town of West Hartford’s website is offline Thursday morning while the IT Division and the West Hartford Police Department’s Detective Division investigate an apparent hacking incident involving a threatening message.

West Hartford Police said that the hack was discovered at approximately 7:30 a.m. Thursday, and the town’s IT department immediately took down the website.

In a statement issued late Thursday morning, West Hartford Police said the following: “The West Hartford Police Department is investigating and are working with the CT Intelligence Center (CTIC) to investigate how this happened; CTIC indicated that a large number of government website defacements have been occurring throughout the country; this particular one also hit communities as far away as California.   There is no threat to public safety.”

Police said that only the public website was attacked, not the town’s network. No personal data has been compromised, police said.

One resident posted on Facebook that he had gone onto the town’s website to look for information about yard waste pick-up when he saw a message that read something like: “If you attack us (North Korea) we will attack Washington, D.C.”

“We are investigating what caused it and the steps to be taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Interim Town Manager Privitera said Thursday morning. He did not yet have a timeframe for when the site would be back online.

The investigation is ongoing, police said.

Check back for updates to this story.

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