It is scary to see that the whole world is in grips of a virus named as COVID-19. Also, the fact that this virus can lead to death is even more dangerous and this is the reason why everyone has been advising us to keep a social distance from each other, stay indoors, work from home and do everything possible to self-isolate ourselves even if we have symptoms or not. However, it is totally frustrating to find out that hackers are still taking advantage of the situation as a new cyberattack was reported by a US health agency.
According to an official statement from National Security Council, it is said that “We are aware of a cyber incident related to the Health and Human Services computer networks, and the federal government is investigating this incident thoroughly,” “HHS and federal government cybersecurity professionals are continuously monitoring and taking appropriate actions to secure our federal networks.” The spokesperson for NSC said that “HHS and federal networks are functioning normally at this time.” and that the penetration inside its systems was not possible which means that the attack became unsuccessful.
This attack was done by overloading the servers of the HHS with millions of hits within a few hours but it is great that the servers were able to handle this much traffic and the overloading was a failure of sorts. Also, fake SMSes were sent to people from the attack but the agency later tweeted that “Text message rumours of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown. @CDCgov has and will continue to post the latest guidance on #COVID19. #coronavirus”. Also, it is said that US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were made aware of the attack and also the fact that data seems to be intact.
