Cyberattack on Mississippi Host U.S.NEXT Disrupts County Websites and Email

Summary

A cyberattack disrupted U.S.NEXT-hosted websites and email, affecting Mississippi counties and other customers. The company says it is working with federal teams and that certain databases and customer account information were not compromised; access to hosted contentor

Key points

• U.S.NEXT said a cyberattack disrupted hosted websites and email after first reporting a network outage Friday.
• Outages affected websites and services for Madison, Hinds, Warren and Clarke counties, along with the Mississippi Association of Coaches and an Iowa business.
• Disrupted services included county information, land records, online payments and participation paperwork for high school all-star games; some access was later restored.
• U.S.NEXT restricted access while assessing risks and said it was working with FBI and Homeland Security teams.
• The company said its database server and customer accounting information were stored in unaffected systems, website administrator passwords were encrypted, and no personal client account information had been compromised.
• U.S.NEXT has not said whether hosted website content or email data was accessed, and has not identified the attack method or attacker.

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