Bloomberg first reported that the United States Health and Human Services Department’s web site suffered from a DDoS cyberattack on Sunday night. This took the entire site online in the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak, which has spiked the search for HHS information dramatically over the past several weeks.
On Sunday, the attackers attempted to disrupt the dissemination of coronavirus information, hitting the site with huge amounts of connection at the same time, overwhelming the server and taking it offline. Although the attack seemed to be aiming to shut down the agency’s systems, it did not do so in any meaningful way. Later that evening, the National Security Council confirmed that a text chain spreading false rumors of a national quarantine was a hoax trying to spread misinformation.
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