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A primary school website looks as if it has been hacked by scammers – with adverts for gambling and cryptocurrencies appearing on pages hosted on its domain name.

On the surface, the website of Bryn Awel Primary School, in Rhymney, looks as you would expect a school website to look – information for parents, contact details, and school news.

However, there are pages under its domain, www.brynawelprimary.co.uk, advertising gambling websites and cryptocurrencies

The scam pages were discovered by London-based security and fraud researcher Danny McLaughlin while carrying out work for a client.

Mr McLaughlin contacted Caerphilly County Borough Council with his concerns but received no reply. He then contacted Caerphilly Observer.

He said: “I can’t be certain there is not some clever redirection going on, but having found the links, I reached out to the head of IT security at the local council via LinkedIn nearly a week ago and did not hear anything. Meanwhile the links remain which suggests no action may have been taken.

“I assume the school is unaware of these. These types of gambling ads seem to affect quite a few business and individual websites in the UK. Maybe it is poor security? They also raise the question are such websites being used to host anything else?”

He added: “I have been a school governor in the past and I would be horrified if I found my school was hosting this type of thing.”

The pages are still live on the school’s domain. Caerphilly Observer has decided not to publish them to avoid sending traffic to them.

Caerphilly County Borough Council has been contacted.