According to tweets from the governor of Louisiana, the US state has once again fallen victim a ransomware attack. The entire situation (ransomware and response efforts) has taken down the systems and websites of Louisiana government agencies.
“Today, we mobilized our cybersecurity team in response to a ransomware attack affecting certain state servers . The Office of Technology Services (OTS) has identified a threat that has impacted some, but not all, state servers,” said Governor Edwards.
According to Edwards, security experts acted immediately and tried to limit the damage by shutting down some additional servers. This resulted in many emails, websites and web applicationsused by government agencies not working.
“The service outage is due to OTS’s aggressive response to prevent additional infection of government servers and not to the ransomware attack,” the governor added.
Which services were affected?
The services that were put out of service due to the whole situation were government websites as well as servers that manage communications via email and internal applications.
According to local media, some of the sites affected were those related to the Governor's Office, the Louisiana Legislature, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Louisiana Department of Administration, the Department of Transportation & Development, and others.
Currently, local government employees use accounts to communicate with each other.
We still don't know the extent to which the ransomware affected the Louisiana state's internal network
According to statements from representatives of the region, the situation is under control. The sitesmentioned above are operating again. However, some of the internal applications may take a few days to be fully restored.
Louisiana was prepared for a ransomware attack
The Louisiana administration reacted quickly to the attack, which is why the consequences were not serious. Louisiana is one of the few American states that has created a plan to effectively deal with cyberattacks.
Two years ago, Governor Edwards created a commissionthat is responsible for cybersecurity and creates action plans to address such attacks.
This summer, Louisiana was again hit by a ransomware attack that affected the systems of Sabine, Morehouse and Ouachita school districts, marking the first time the committee was called upon to implement its plans.
The governor, however, was forced to issue an emergency declaration to mobilize state agencies to deal with the attack. In yesterday's attack, he did not have to do this because the OTS responded quickly and effectively and stopped the ransomware attack.
Ransomware attacks on local governments in the US have become a common occurrence in recent months, with one report reporting 81 attacks since the beginning of the year.
