Macon County’s official website of Circuit Clerk was hacked by the Iranian Hackers

Macon County in the State of Illinois is the most recent government entity getting targeted by the hackers', who hacked a web page and then disabled the access. The County joins the ever growing government entities list who became victims of the hacking attempts.

Macon County's official website of Circuit Clerk was hacked on Aug. 18, 2019. On the night of Aug. 18, 2019, the main web page of Circuit Clerk's office was changed with Guy Fawkes mask image, the Iranian flag image, along with the text: "Hacked by Iranian Hackers. Hacked by Mamad Warning. We are always closer to you. Your identity is known to us. Your information is for us ;) take care".

Any user who has clicked the mask or the flag image was redirected to what seems like the Instagram page of the hackers'. However, the webpage was restored by 10am on the next day (i.e. Aug. 19, 2019) by the Information Technology department of the county.

Circuit Clerk's office handles all the records related to traffic, criminal and civil cases in the Macon County. But as the personal identification information has been stored on another system, so it was not in danger of getting accessed. Lois Durbin said "the firewall went up, and everything was protected and nothing was compromised".

Once this incident was discovered, the County has reported about it to Illinois State Terrorism Intelligence Center that is operated by State Police, FBI, Illinois National Guard, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Department of Homeland Security.

Josh Tanner, the Macon County Clerk, said that whenever a cyber incident takes place, it is a good time for collecting new information as well as review the cyber security procedures. Officials of the County are taking necessary precautionary measures as well as reviewing cybersecurity procedures so as to prevent such kind of incidents from occurring in the future.

"The people in our IT Department are just trained to defend against these types of things. The Intelligence Center workers are trained to go after them," said Tanner, as reported by Herald & Review.

In recent times, Murfreesboro City's Bill Payment Website of Water Department, Randolph County website, as well as Crook County government websites along with sheriff's office websites have also been hacked by the Iranian hackers.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/5/2019