back to article Cyberattack shuts down unemployment, labor websites across the US

A cyberattack on a software company almost a week ago continues to ripple through labor and workforce agencies in a number of US states, cutting off people from such services as unemployment benefits and job-seeking programs. Labor departments and related agencies in at least nine states have been impacted. According to the …

  1. katrinab Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Can someone explain

    I don’t get this idea that “it is a really sophisticated attack, so it must have been a government”

    Have they ever seen what government IT is like?

    Of course logging in over ssh with “password” as the root password counts as a sophisticated attack, but that is a whole different story.

    1. VoiceOfTruth Silver badge

      Re: Can someone explain

      They take advice from "experts" like Solar Winds.

  2. ecofeco Silver badge

    I never get tired of saying it

    So how's that cloud thing working for ya?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I never get tired of saying it

      Fantastic. One secretary got a warning about a page not being https and we shut down the whole system while we "investigate". We can probably stop paying benefits to those 'poors who refuse to work' for months.

      My friend in klan golf club, in the next state reckon they can shut down medicaid the same way

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: I never get tired of saying it

        'poors who refuse to work'

        Looks like the US hasn't progressed much past the Victorian workhouse mentality..

        (I know, glass houses and stones - but at least (at the moment) unemployment end job seeking is a Government function and not doled out to the private sector..)

  3. Duncan Macdonald

    Backups ?

    With decent offline backups, recovery from an attack should be easy. But of course beancounters see backup equipment (and the cost of running the backup procedure) as an unnecessary expense.

    Where I worked in the 90's the computer system was responsible for the movement of a LOT of cash (over £500 million each week!!) so a rugged backup procedure was used - a full image backup of every disk to tape each night - the tapes were held for 30 days before they were reused (and 1 tape per month was pulled from the cycle and kept permanently) - the backups were tested by restoring each tape to a second system the next working night after the backup was taken.

    This level of protection is now very rare.

  4. MrMerrymaker

    Very weird targets

    Was going to joke that some American republican group did this,

    But I see there's already a narrative about the government doing this.

  5. gasco

    Cyberattack are common now a days. We should keep are data safe and private to protect it from cyberattack.

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