Calgary Stampede website experiences an embarrassing hack that caused questionable blogs to be posted

When a Calgary Reddit user signed up for Calgary Stampede emails to help prepare to host guests from out of town in July, he didn’t expect to see blogs with titles such as “How to get a sugar daddy in Nigeria.” 

But that’s just one of the questionable blogs the user was sent, taking to Reddit to share his shocking discovery. 

“Most of it is security tech-related, but there are a number of HIGHLY questionable posts,” the anonymous user wrote in the Calgary forum. 

The other blogs consisted of titles such as “Getting laid in Indonesia” and one about mail-order brides. In fact, the user said none of the blogs were even Stampede related. 

“If I was running the organization, I’d be firing someone,” he said in the post.  

When contacted by Calgary Citizen, the user says he is shocked nobody noticed sooner.

“As an executive in a tech organization, I had secondhand embarrassment and anger over how long it went on and they didn’t notice,” he says.

“As another poster said, they are supposed to be a world-class organization. Someone’s blog being hijacked with no one noticing for weeks isn’t world class.”

‘They don’t call it the Wild West for nothing’ 

When Calgary Citizen contacted the Calgary Stampede for an interview, the organization provided a statement:

“We can confirm that during the transition to a new platform, a specific web page was hacked with external content that does not align with our organization,” Calgary Stampede communications advisor Christine Thompson said. 

“The content that was published is no longer on any of our pages and we are confident in the overall security of our website.” 

It’s hard to know how long the posts were up before being taken down but some users were able to get screenshots, as evidenced by the photo above, but another user was able to track that the blogs have been up since December. 

Reddit users had a few funny comments about the snafu.

“They don’t call it the Wild West for nothing,” one user quipped.