DDoS Attacks Launched Amid Unrest

Summary

Since the killing of George Floyd on May 25, cyber-attacks have accompanied the protests and unrest. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack – which attempts to make a device or networked resource unavailable – was reported against the Minneapolis Police Department in the early morning on May 28 and disabled a number of the city’s websites and systems. The hacktivist collective known as Anonymous claimed credit for carrying out the attack. Overall, DDoS attempts against government websites – including police and fire – have recently increased by 1.8 times and against military websites by 3.8 times, as reported by CloudFlare. Additionally, many advocacy groups fighting racism have also been the targets of DDoS attacks. When comparing the last weekend of April and the last weekend of May, CloudFlare blocked HTTP requests performing DDoS attempts against advocacy groups 1,120 times more in May. Cyber-attacks often accompany issues and conflicts in the public domain as a supplement to other activities.

Recommendations

The NJCCIC recommends those that may be targets of cyber-attacks during this time, including DDoS attacks, employ cybersecurity best practices and review the NJCCIC post DDoS: Internet-of-Things Likely to Fuel More Disruptive Attacks and apply the recommendations within.