The Alabama Office of Information Technology said that the state authorities spent the day defending their networks from hackers on Wednesday, March 13, after a cyberattack repeatedly disrupted the websites of several local government institutions.
Jeremy Ward, a representative for the Alabama Office of Information Technology, told CNN that the interruptions "have diminished throughout the day as we have worked with our vendors to counter the denial-of-service attack," which started on Tuesday afternoon, March 12.
The office of Republican Gov. Kay Ivey confirmed that no government networks were breached and no data were taken.
DDoS Attack on Government Websites
A typical assault approach known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) was allegedly used in the cyberattack on Alabama government websites, wherein the sites were bombarded with fake traffic in an effort to take them down.
Coastal Information Security partner and cybersecurity specialist Gerald Auger says these assaults are effective at interrupting businesses and services, but he does not believe they are sophisticated.
The anonymous organization known as Anonymous Sudan took credit for the DDoS attack on the websites of the Alabama government. Among its intended recipients was the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. They said on their Telegram channel that they wanted to draw attention to the terrible situation in Sudan.
The group first surfaced last year and describes itself as "hacktivist," short for activist hacking group, that targets organizations for political purposes.
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Network Disruption in Birmingham
This widespread hack occurred at the same time as Birmingham, one of the biggest cities in Alabama, was dealing with what seemed to be a distinct computer network problem that had led to service disruptions for days.
According to a statement released by the City of Birmingham on March 6, transactions related to licensing, taxes, and permits were impacted by a disturbance in the city's computer network. No public update has been released by the city in a week.
Police operations have been impacted in some locations due to the network interruption, as reported by AL.com. This includes tasks such as verifying the ownership of a vehicle or detecting outstanding warrants.
