14 DAY TRIAL // Boston law authorities are disclosing a short but powerful DDoS attack that hit many servers used by city officials, the Boston Herald reports.
The attacks took place on December 15 and it affected servers that provided Internet connection for Boston's City Hall, but also other city agencies, including the town's fire department.
Authorities said that despite the intense attack, emergency services were not affected since they ran on separate systems.
In recent days, officials from Los Angeles and New York have been getting threats of imminent DDoS attacks from various unnamed hacking groups. According to Boston officials, this was not the case.
Jascha Franklin- Hodge, Boston’s chief information officer described the incident as "a sort of thing that is a minor act of cybervandalism."
Authorities also said that they intervened to stop the attack in 20 minutes after it began. That's very impressive, or the attack was not that powerful.
In the presently evolving cyber-threat landscape, the IT infrastructures in many government agencies have been seriously lagging behind, either due to poor management or due to a lack of investment.
Opportunistic hackers will always try to make a name for themselves by attacking these easy targets, because of their extremely outmatched defensive measures.
Besides being a victim of such attacks, the lack of proper equipment also makes it also impossible to track down the source of the attack.