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U.S. Health Agency Suffers Cyber-Attack During Covid-19 Response

81 points by jbegley 7y ago

sschueller 7y ago
"The hack involved overloading the HHS servers with millions of hits over several hours." A freaked out public could case the same...
- empath75 7y ago
  Yeah i was wondering if it's possible that they've just never had significant traffic before.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  Indeed. First of all, a DDoS attack (if that's what it was) isn't a hack. Second of all, remember a "hit" can be incredibly misleading. A single webpage that makes 100 requests is 100 hits. So millions of hits could be merely 10,000's of visits over several hours... ...which sounds entirely reasonable, no? Like someone popular on Twitter posting a link to the site. Story doesn't add up.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  As could someones scraper or bot configured to have zero timeout between data refreshes...
supdatecron 7y ago
> The National Security Council tweeted just before midnight: “Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown. @CDCgov has and will continue to post the latest guidance on #COVID19.” Does anyone have a copy or screenshot of this tweet?
- joelrunyon 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/WHNSC/status/1239398218292748292 https://twitter.com/WHNSC/status/1239398218292748292
kryogen1c 7y ago
this is a _very_ poor article. it has grammatical errors, clunky writing, inconsistent info, and no public sources except a tweet. hopefully this was machine generated, because if people tried to pass this as journalism they should be fired. the phrase "one of the people" is used 4 times in 5.5 paragraphs. "The hacking involved multiple incidents." "The tweet was in part meant to address the hacking, which involved multiple incidents." these two sentences are back-to-back. >The hack involved overloading the HHS servers with millions of hits over several hours. how does this lead to a distribution of fake information? technically, this article does not make sense. >The attack appears to have been intended to slow the agency’s systems down, but didn’t do so in any meaningful way, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss an incident that was not public. this is also not congruous with the hack leading to the release of false information, and is grammatically incorrect.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  It's paywalled and they still can't afford a copy editor.
neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/FGMmB https://archive.md/FGMmB

81 points by jbegley 7y ago

"The hack involved overloading the HHS servers with millions of hits over several hours." A freaked out public could case the same...

empath75 7y ago
Yeah i was wondering if it's possible that they've just never had significant traffic before.
crazygringo 7y ago
Indeed. First of all, a DDoS attack (if that's what it was) isn't a hack. Second of all, remember a "hit" can be incredibly misleading. A single webpage that makes 100 requests is 100 hits. So millions of hits could be merely 10,000's of visits over several hours... ...which sounds entirely reasonable, no? Like someone popular on Twitter posting a link to the site. Story doesn't add up.
londons_explore 7y ago
As could someones scraper or bot configured to have zero timeout between data refreshes...

supdatecron 7y ago

> The National Security Council tweeted just before midnight: “Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown. @CDCgov has and will continue to post the latest guidance on #COVID19.” Does anyone have a copy or screenshot of this tweet?

joelrunyon 7y ago
https://twitter.com/WHNSC/status/1239398218292748292 https://twitter.com/WHNSC/status/1239398218292748292

kryogen1c 7y ago

this is a _very_ poor article. it has grammatical errors, clunky writing, inconsistent info, and no public sources except a tweet. hopefully this was machine generated, because if people tried to pass this as journalism they should be fired. the phrase "one of the people" is used 4 times in 5.5 paragraphs. "The hacking involved multiple incidents." "The tweet was in part meant to address the hacking, which involved multiple incidents." these two sentences are back-to-back. >The hack involved overloading the HHS servers with millions of hits over several hours. how does this lead to a distribution of fake information? technically, this article does not make sense. >The attack appears to have been intended to slow the agency’s systems down, but didn’t do so in any meaningful way, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss an incident that was not public. this is also not congruous with the hack leading to the release of false information, and is grammatically incorrect.

unlinked_dll 7y ago
It's paywalled and they still can't afford a copy editor.

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/FGMmB https://archive.md/FGMmB