Website of the Randolph County in North Carolina got hacked

The website of the Randolph County in North Carolina got hacked by an international hacker group, who defaced homepage of the website with vulgar anti-government message. "Welcome to Randolph County" homepage was replaced by the hackers with graphic of one person in Guy Fawkes mask, who is also holding one protest sign stating "Join the Revolution".

After discovery of the hack, the IT department of the county has launched an investigation. They found out that a hacker group has gained access to website of the Randolph County at 10:44pm on July 29, 2019, and then replaced the homepage around 12:22am on July 30, 2019.

Hal Johnson, Randolph County Manager, said that any kind of information was not compromised, and also ransom amount was not demanded for restoring the website of the county. The message has been removed quickly from homepage, and then the website was returned back to normal.

"Our IT department was alerted by system safeguards and took quick action to remove the message, but many citizens saw the hacked message," said Johnson in an email that was sent to Board of Commissioners of Randolph County, reported Government Technology.

A hacker group called 'VandaTheGod' is speculated as being responsible for this hack. Hal Johnson noted the hacker group of Brazil has been hacking the government websites, and no less than 59 other government websites were targeted during past week.

The Twitter account having 'VandaTheGod' username has posted a chain of tweets that looks like claiming the responsibility for these hacks. Most of these tweets include an image of the message that was posted on websites.

The officials of the county reported this hack to Sheriff Office of Randolph County, North Carolina (N.C.) State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), as well as various law enforcement authorities. Then, the N.C. SBI has forwarded this case to U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS is at this time investigating this incident.

Meanwhile, the IT team of the county has been taking corrective measures as well as enhancing their cybersecurity system, so as to avoid this type of incidents from occurring in future. "They've conducted a forensic search on our computers to determine how they were able to access a well-defended computer operation. They've identified that and have taken steps so that it could not happen again," Johnson said, reported Fox 8 News.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/26/2019