The city of Sacramento's main website and two other city sites were taken offline on Sunday, apparently after someone hacked into a parking website.

Sunday morning readers reported to The Bee that a city parking website had been taken over by someone who wrote: "HaCKed by El _MhUaMMcD. This Turkish Hacker."

The city also learned about the problem at 9 a.m. and sent six employees to city offices to troubleshoot, officials said.

City spokesman Maurice Chaney said the websites affected were ones for parks and and recreation and the convention center and the city's main website, www.cityofsacramento.org.

He said other city websites, which are on other servers, appeared to be intact.

Adrian Lamo, a world-renowned hacking expert and profiler, told The Bee on Sunday evening that the attack was probably "a random scam."

Lamo is credited with alerting authorities to the Army private suspected of leaking information to WikiLeaks.org. He currently is a threat analyst who develops profiles of online intruders.

Among nations, Turkey isn't known for its hacking community, he said. He said the hacker probably is "an individual looking around for security vulnerabilities and went after (the city website) as low hanging fruit."

The signed tag "is indicative of bragging rights," Lamo said. "I don't think it is anything political."

Chaney said the city notified the Sacramento City Police Department of the online attack. He added that the financial data of residents or others who pay bills online "was not anywhere near being compromised."

"The important thing," Chaney said, "is that once we learned about it, we shut everything down and we're going through the steps of what went wrong and making sure it doesn't happen again."

Hacking can be a crime under both federal and state laws, depending on the nature of the crime.

The popular website www.findlaw.com notes that in general, computer crimes that involve unlawfully accessing, changing or damaging a computer, computer system or computer network may result in a fine, imprisonment or both.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Loretta Kalb, (916) 321-1133.

• Read more articles by Loretta Kalb