Hackers disabled municipal government web sites in D.C. and New York City this week in a cyber assault that shut down nyc.gov for two hours on April 17 and targeted Washington, D.C.’s departments of Transportation and Consumer and Regulatory Affairs on April 19.
The attacks, called distributed denial of service, flood a targeted site with so many requests that the target’s server is overwhelmed.
“The District government has detected an attempted intrusion into it’s technology infrastructure system,” the D.C. Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in an email to specified recipients at. “Customers may experience intermittent difficulties in accessing the District’s web site as we attempt to address the issue. We are aggressively working to resolve this matter.”
While the city’s motor vehicles administration site and others were unavailable April 19, city officials minimized the attacks. “They’re not endangering services,” Pedro Ribeiro, director of communications for Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), told The Washington Post. He said the attacks take down the sites sporadically for short intervals.
The attacks in D.C. and on the New York City’s web site were linked to a group known at UGNazi that claims to be protesting municipal government operations in D.C. and New York. A hacker, identified as Cosmosis Jones, e-mailed The Post taking credit for the attack, but not fully explaining the reasons for the protests.
“Our attack on DC.gov was one of many reasons. To address that we will stand up for our rights on the Internet. We have also attacked NYC.gov due to OWS (Occupy Wall St),” the hacker wrote. “We will continue to launch further attacks against various DC websites and gov websites.”