According to sources, Washington County (a Government organization in Arkansas) was hit with a cyber attack. It was first reported on 2023-12-19.
Source 1 | 2023-12-19
“ The attempted cyberattack on Washington County’s computer systems has apparently ended with the county having blocked more than 64,000 attempts to log on to its servers.“
“Tad Sours, the county’s communications director, said Tuesday morning the attempts to log on to the county’s systems seemed to have ended. The so-called “dictionary attack” began Friday when county officials blocked more than 14,000 attempts to log on to its servers. On Saturday, the number grew to more than 17,000 and increased again on Sunday with more than 33,000 efforts to access county servers being detected and blocked. “
““There were only 176 attempted log-ons Monday and zero so far today,” Sours said Tuesday morning. “It does appear they tried us for the weekend, and now they’ve moved on.” “
“County officials described the cyberattack as what’s called a “dictionary attack,” which TechTarget.com describes as a method of breaking into a password-protected computer, network or other IT resource by systematically entering every word in a dictionary as a password. A dictionary attack can also be used in an attempt to find the key necessary to decrypt an encrypted message or document. Dictionary attacks work because many computer users and businesses insist on using ordinary words as passwords, according to TechTarget.com. “
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