Several Mississippi state websites were knocked offline during Tuesday’s midterm election in what was the most significant digital disruption of the day, though a federal official warned that more could be on the way as ballots are counted.
“An abnormally large increase in traffic volume due to distributed denial-of-service activity caused the public facing side of our websites to be periodically inaccessible this afternoon,” the Mississippi secretary of state’s office said in a statement Tuesday night.
“We want to be extremely clear and reassure Mississippians our election system is secure and has not been compromised.”
A senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) official confirmed the attack hours before the statement was released.
“We have been chatting with them for the last several hours working with some of the vendors to put the mitigations in place,” the official told reporters during the organization’s third press briefing of the day.
A pro-Russian hacking group took credit for the attack — which did not interfere with voting or counting processes — in a Telegram post.
