- Several Alabama government websites was hit by a denial-of-service cyberattack on Tuesday afternoon
- The attack was carried out by a hacker group called Anonymous Sudan
- Birmingham (a city in Alabama) has also been affected by a separate cyber attack
The Alabama state government was hit by a cyberattack this Tuesday that forced many government agencies’ websites to be shut down temporarily.
The attack has been identified as a denial-of-service (DDoS) cyberattack. According to reports, the miscreants filled the websites with a lot of fake traffic that forced them to go out of service.
Out of all the targets, the three main victims were the Alabama Supercomputer Authority, the Office of Information Technology, and of course, the State of Alabama.
The attack started on Tuesday afternoon and the websites were down for almost the entire day. But thankfully, they have slowly started recovering. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) team is still working on the issue, so some of the sites might be slow for the time being.
We understand that the disruptions were initially widespread across state services, and those effects have diminished throughout the day as we have worked with our vendors to counter the denial-of-service attack.Gov. Kay Ivey’s office
They also added that so far there have been no data breaches and that all of the state computers and the confidential data on them seems to have been untouched.
Read more: Georgia’s largest county is still struggling with January’s cyber attack
Who Is Responsible For The Attack?
A well-known hacker group called Anonymous Sudan has claimed responsibility for the attack through a post on Telegram. The group identifies itself as a hacktivist – hackers who use cyber attacks to further their activist causes.
Through this attack, for instance, they are trying to draw attention to Sudan’s dire state and protesting against the US’s alleged support of Israel. However, it’s unclear how the attack on Alabama will help Sudan or mitigate the Israel-Palestine war.
Speaking of the group itself, no one has any idea about their origin. However, it’s believed that it’s supported by Russia and is against Western agendas.
The group has been quite active in the past few years and is known for strategically timing its attacks in a way that yields maximum impact. Unlike other hacker groups, they don’t care about staying hidden. Most of the time, they announce their attacks on social media, just as they did in this case.
Another Cyberattack On Birmingham, A Major City In Alabama
- Times are tough for Alabama right now as one of its largest cities, Birmingham, is also struggling with a separate set of cyber problems that has caused service issues.
- The City of Birmingham released a statement on March 6 stating that the attack affected taxing, permitting, and licensing, as well as some police work.
For instance, authorities are having trouble checking whether someone has a past warrant or if a vehicle is stolen.
It’s been a week since the attack and there’s no official update from the city. In fact, the questions asked to Sergeant LaQuitta Wade (spokesman for Birmingham police) were redirected to Birmingham’s Office of Public Information.
The surprising part is that Governor Kay Ivey already established a cybersecurity operations center (the first of its kind in Alabama) in 2018. This center was supposed to tackle and minimize the impact of cyber-attacks in all 146 agencies of the state.
The only silver lining here is that these types of attacks aren’t very sophisticated.
In this case, for instance, the websites were only down for as long as the hackers kept sending in fake traffic. However, regardless of the severity of a cyberattack, it’s still disruptive and needs to be eradicated.
Read more: Nationwide cyber attack slows down prescription processing across pharmacies
