Minneapolis city websites victim of cyber attack
Some city of Minneapolis websites were the victim of a cyber attack Thursday morning, the city confirmed in a statement.
The city said in the early hours of the morning some public websites and systems "experienced an outdate due to a Denial of Service cyber attack," resulting in some staff and residents not being able to use the affected sites and systems.
By about 9 a.m., the city had about 95 percent of the affect sites and systems working again, with the city saying it "responded swiftly to the attack." It believes it'll have 100 percent of the sites working again by the end of the day Thursday.
"There is no evidence of a data breach or that any data was compromised," the city said.
Denial of Service cyber attack happens when bandwidth or resources are flooded with external traffic until they can't respond or crash, preventing legitimate users from accessing the site, the city said.
"Although these types of attacks are not completely unavoidable, they are fairly common, and the city of Minneapolis has proactive measures in place to respond to and mitigate disruptions when they do occur," the city said. "The city of Minneapolis IT continues to monitor its cyber platforms to ensure further disruption doesn't happen again."
When visiting the city's main website at 4 p.m. on Thursday, users had to prove they were human by clicking a box and identifying the appropriate images before the website would load.
The attack against the city came the same week George Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck while he was handcuffed.
