Louisiana, the South Eastern state of North America is back in news headlines for being hit by a ransomware attack for the second time this year. Several government-related websites were reportedly impacted by the cyber attack which forcing authorities to pull down most of the state-run websites as a precautionary measure.
John Bel Edwards, the Governor of the Louisiana state confirmed the incident and added that no data loss has occurred. Mr. Edwards has also stated that the ransom demand put forwarded by hackers will not be entertained as the data recovery will be done through data backups.
They are two interesting points in the incident- First, the cyberattack happened for the second time this year, as the first was reported in July’19 when the State Governor declared a State emergency. Secondly, the attack took place when the whole of the world, including the US President Donald Trump, was interested in knowing the results of the gubernatorial election- as it was John Bel Edwards Vs Eddie Rispone.
Tyler Brey, the State Secretary said that most of the government websites will be brought back to life by this month-end. However, data related to several agencies might take several days for recovery.
Details such as who was behind the ransomware attack and why they were re-launching attacks on the same target are yet to be known.
Note- Ransomware is a kind of malware that infects a database and encrypts files disallowing them from being accessed from then-on.
