The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks began on government networks on July 4.
However, Amy Kudwa, deputy press secretary for the United States DHS, told ZDNet Asia sister's site ZDNet UK on Wednesday that attacks on federal systems were common, and that the United States Computer Emergency Response Team could deal with them.
"We see attacks on federal networks every day, and measures in place have minimized the impact to federal Web sites," said Kudwa. "US-CERT will continue to work with its federal partners and the private sector to address this activity."
Kudwa declined to say which Web sites had been attacked, but said that both public and private sector Web sites had been affected.
"DHS is aware of distributed denial of service attacks on federal and private sector public-facing Web sites," said Kudwa. "The department's US-CERT has issued a notice to federal departments and agencies, as well as other partner organizations, on this activity and advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."
The BBC reported that the White House, Defense Department and New York stock exchange were all targeted.
The Treasury Department, a part of the Secret Service site, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Transportation Department had also been under attack, a U.S. government source told ZDNet UK. While there was some slight slowing of U.S. government networks, on the whole the attacks had not had much effect, said the source.
This article was first published as a blog post on ZDNet UK.
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