CNN reports that several Alabama government agencies had their websites disrupted by distributed denial-of-service attacks earlier this week, which has since been claimed by self-proclaimed hacktivist operation Anonymous Sudan.
The DDoS intrusions, which Netscout Senior Threat Intelligence Manager Richard Hummel said spanned between five and 10 minutes, did not result in any network compromise or data exfiltration, according to the Office of Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey. Moreover, the state Office of Information Technology noted that it has worked with its vendors to immediately address the incident. Such attacks follow a separate network disruption at Alabama's City of Birmingham, which has impacted licensing, permitting, and taxing activities, as well as police operations. Such developments come amid an ever increasing prevalence of cybersecurity threats against state and local governments, with an Emsisoft report noting that ransomware attacks directly affected more than 2,200 governments, schools, and hospitals across the U.S. last year.
