Threat Intelligence, Incident Response, TDR, Threat Management

Utah systems attacked up to 300M times daily

The State of Utah, home of the National Security Agency (NSA) data center and the Hill Air Force Base, receives as many as 300,000,000 attacks per day, a local broadcast station reported. The state's commissioner of public safety Keith Squires told KUTV that attacks against the state's computer systems increased from an average of 25,000 to 80,000 per day in 2010.

Other states also saw attack increases during this period, but “most were not seeing anything like we were,” Squires said. “We didn't realize it at first, but my opinion is in that same time, Utah was getting a lot of notoriety for the NSA facility that was being built here.”

The increase in attacks against Utah's systems, initially reported a year ago, were believed at first to be the result of hackivists, but officials' comment now hint that the state is targeted by more sophisticated groups. Utah's information security director said the Hill Air Force Base – which houses the Air Force Material Command's Ogden Air Logistics Complex – may invite the attention of motivated attackers seeking information about advanced weapons systems at the base.

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