Election day website crash in Knox County coincided with more direct hack, report says
An investigation into an apparent distributed denial-of-service attack on a Knox County, Tennessee, primary election earlier this month revealed that hackers aimed to gain unauthorized access to a county web server. When Knox County held its Republican mayoral primary on May 1, its website, where it was reporting results, went down. Officials at the time said that heavy traffic overwhelmed the website that that it was “highly suggestive” of a DDoS attack. The county hired cybersecurity firm Sword & Shield to investigate the incident. The company’s report, released late last week, reveals that not only was the county website subjected to an unmanageable level of traffic, but hackers also actively sought to exploit a vulnerability in the website. David Ball, the county’s deputy director of IT, told CyberScoop by email that the hackers did successfully access the server but didn’t do much else. “There is evidence that hackers were able […]
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