The administration's site was targeted by a group campaigning for greater precautions against information warfare.

BBC Scotland Science Correspondent Kenneth Macdonald reports.

The group said the security lapses meant hackers could have gained access and theoretically declared Scottish independence.

DNScon is a computer security conference which claims hackers, police officers and lawyers are among its members.

The group said the biggest loophole in the Scottish Executive's site lay open for months and remained open for several days after First Minister Donald Dewar was alerted to the problem.

DNScon is a publicity shy group

DNScon said hackers could have planted false information on the website, such as the results of a reshuffle of the Scottish cabinet, declaring independence, or manipulating the stock market by falsely changing taxes on North Sea oil or whisky.

The Scottish Executive said there was "a potential security problem" which was discovered two weeks ago and the company which manages the site was informed.

A spokeswoman said a number of countermeasures were immediately taken.

Members of DNScon are normally publicity shy but one representative, known only as 'Mark', said the Scottish Executive's website failed to keep up to date with the latest security measures.

He said: "The Scottish Executive site was over a year out of date when it comes to these software patches and fixes.

"So the problems were known about in the computer industry for over a year and solved for over a year but they just had not got round, through their policies and procedures, to applying them.

'Simple addition'

"The giveaway was that by typing a simple addition to a web page address you could read code that you as a normal user of the website should not have been able to see."

BBC Scotland's Ken Macdonald reports on the cyber wars

The campaigners said the UK is not taking the dangers so-called of Infowar attacks seriously enough.

A statement on the group's own website said: "The internet has tremendous potential for enhancing the relationship between democratic governments and the public.

"E-Commerce is of strategic importance to the UK economy.

"All this is now under attack from individual and government sponsored InfoWarriors."

The group likened hacking processes to the Cold War and, in painting a doomsday scenario said InfoWar could mean anything from missile attacks on enemy radar and telecom centres, to the creation of computer viruses.

Spin doctoring

Disinformation and spin doctoring have also been seen as constituting InfoWar. The end aim of all these activities, the group said, is to win publicity in the same way that terrorist bombs do.

BBC Internet Correspondent, Chris Nuttall, said InfoWar is already playing a part in modern day conflicts.

He said: "We saw it in the Kosovo conflict, how Nato's computers were attacked and the network was almost brought to a halt for a time.

"We've seen it in East Timor, in Indonesia where the government has come under attack and an Irish site which hosted a virtual East Timor site was infiltrated as well, in what was seen as the Indonesian government acting against it, although that's never been proved."

DNScon has called for a 24-hour hotline to be established to enable whistleblowers to expose gaps in the country's Internet defences.