Several Barbados websites have been hacked over the pass couple of years by what seem to be unknown perpetrators. The latest casualty has been the the online Value Added Tax (VAT) system.
Speaking in the House of Assembly last Tuesday, Minister of Finance, Christopher Sinckler made this announcement.
"I want to apologise to the public or to express my empathy to empathise with them in relation to what has happened with the Value Added Tax Division. I think it would be remiss of me if I didn't".
In order to fix the problem, the original software developers have had to return from Canada, and have been working for the last couple of weeks to try to reconstitute the system and put a stronger security system in place. (barbadosadvocate)
It has been a year now since the Value Added Tax system allowed all persons filing VAT returns online, having stated operations effective Tuesday, Nov 1, 2011.
The department had decided it wasn't it would no longer be mailing out tax returns which would be available online by logging on to https://evetas.customs.gov.bb/. This website is currently down and shows the message "SSL connection error - Unable to make a secure connection to the server. This may be a problem with the server, or it may be requiring a client authentication certificate that you don't have".
According to the website Zone-H which is an archive of defaced websites many sites within Barbados carrying the .bb top-level domain have been hacked including, www.nis.gov.bb, http://www.bginis.gov.bb/, barbadospolice.gov.bb/, lawcourts.gov.bb