Hackers hit Indiana website over religious freedom law
Hackers allegedly took down Indiana’s state website Friday in response to a new law criticized as anti-gay.
Twitter user @YourVikingdom, who purports to be based in Russia, claimed responsibility for a cyberattack against IN.gov on Friday afternoon.
{mosads}Soon the hashtag #OpIndiana began generating conversation about further attacks, including some by users claiming affiliation with Anonymous.
Indiana’s website was offline for several hours, according to reports, but back online by 5 p.m.
“Indiana, like many other states, has been targeted with a denial of service interruption,” said Graig Lubsen, a spokesman for the Indiana Office of Technology, in a statement to IndyStar.
“The website was not hacked. … The denial of service interruption began at approximately 2:00, but the site has not been continuously down.”
Denial-of-service attacks overwhelm a server with false traffic in order to make a website unavailable to normal users.
Hackers appeared to be responding to a new law that would prevent state and local governments from “substantially burdening” religious practice without a compelling interest.
Critics have said the law will allow businesses to turn away gay, lesbian and transgender customers.
Indiana’s is not the first state government website to be attacked this week, though the motives in other cases are less clear. Maine’s website was down on-and-off for several days, and Oklahoma government sites have experienced interruptions recently.
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