U.S Government Websites Encounter DDoS Attack

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack hit the U.S government by impairing its main 'Library-of-Congress' portal on July 17, 2016. Some defensive measures were implemented initially, but they weren't sufficient, as the attack gradually increased during the next two days, causing continuous problems to the website visitors comprising government officials.

The Library-of-Congress website maintains several other government websites as complimentary sites. During the attack, employees of the Congress' library couldn't access even the complimentary sites or use their official e-mails accessed from the same server.

One important website under the library, Congress.gov that monitors legislative procedures by the Congress continued to be inaccessible till at least July 19 afternoon.

According to Softpedia's reporting, the early defensive measures were countered and the attackers continued their assault now with greater vigor. Consequently, the congress.gov and another online site copyright.gov, America's copyright office became inaccessible.

Government officials in USA profusely visit the aforementioned three portals to access data on committee notes and bills of the Congress. The non-profit and non-partisan 'Sunlight Foundation,' which ensures government maintain transparency in all official matters, blogged that the access prevention of the websites all the more established that legislative procedures, among other things, should be made transparent for the general public. And if any one of the three websites shuts down for reasons like a cyber-attack, another Congress site namely Govtrack.gov could continuously appraise the citizens how the Congress was handling its day-to-day operations, till the major sites resumed functioning. Zdnet.com posted this, July 20, 2016.

It's probable that the hackers thought their efforts were fruitful in getting hold over the libraryofcongress.gov and congress.gov websites, imagining the sites contained critical information. There maybe a misunderstanding that congress.gov is directly involved with the Senate's or House's legislative functions, when actually it just provides information related to them. Those most affected with the DDoS attack on the libraryofcongress.gov site were researchers and librarians interested in searching and scanning catalogs.

It appears the DDoS assault was used because of ease in performing it. DDoS is a condition whereby a website is flooded with so much of fake traffic that the site perforce shuts down.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/25/2016