Washington County systems hit with cyberattack
It was a dictionary attack, which is a tactic used to break into password-protected computers, etc. by literally trying every word in the dictionary.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Ark — The Washington County government said a cyberattack was unsuccessful after the county’s computer services were hit with 60,000 hack attempts between Friday, Dec. 15 and Sunday.
According to Washington County Director of Communications Tad Sours, an attempt to hack the county computer systems began on Friday with 14,000 attempts, 17,000 attempts on Saturday, and then another 33,000 on Sunday. Sours said the attempts were “not successful at all” with “no service failures.”
“They attack thousands of municipalities, businesses, and government agencies all the time, looking for [something] they haven’t found here,” said Sours.
The number of attempts on Monday hasn’t been calculated yet, but Sours said it appears the attempts have scaled back.
Sours described the attempts as a dictionary attack, which is a tactic used by hackers trying to break into password-protected computers, networks, or other IT resources by literally trying every word in the dictionary as a possible password.
“They’re trying to log in to random emails to see if they can break through our security,” said Sours. “They’re trying to get into our system to send things out using a ‘.gov’ email address so that more people would fall for a scam.”
Tom Kirkham, CEO and founder of Kirkham IronTech which is a cybersecurity specialist company said this is a large issue.
“It happens thousands of times a second to every device that’s connected to a network,” said Kirkham.
Kirkham said it’s important to be aware during the holidays and weekends.
“There are a lot of people off work—like cybersecurity people, or IT…
