Critical Infrastructure Security, Threat Management

DDoS attack disrupts Mississippi election websites

Numerous Mississippi election websites have been disrupted by a distributed denial-of-service attack claimed by a pro-Russian hacktivist group during Tuesday's midterm polls, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Mitigations are already being worked on by state officials, noted a Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency official. Despite being aware of the claims of the hacktivist group on the intrusion, the DDoS attack has not been attributed to a specific threat actor. "While attribution is inherently difficult, we've not seen any evidence to suggest that these are part of a widespread coordinated campaign. I suspect we're going to see more of this activity," said the official, who emphasized that there has been no other evidence of DDoS attacks against election reporting websites while denouncing allegations of malicious activity during the polls. While Illinois' Champaign County's clerk's office reported having its voter registration database compromised, another CISA official noted that the disruption has been caused by technical issues with a vendor, which have already been addressed.

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