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Utah cybersecurity experts block Iran digital intrusion attempts to get into state websites

UPDATED: JANUARY 14, 2020 AT 12:21 PM
BY
KSLNewsRadio

Utah cybersecurity experts say they have successfully blocked Iran digital intrusion attempts to breach state websites.

These breaches were digital intrusion efforts coming from Iran and targeting government sites in different states.

Utah officials told the Deseret News the Iran digital intrusion attempts were not successful. They weren’t hacking attemps per se, but automated digital surveillance trying to find vulnerabilities.

The Utah Department of Technology Services says they saw more attempts to get into the network over the weekend, and they blocked them.

“On Sunday we saw an uptick in the number of attempts to get into our network and were able to tell that traffic was coming from Iran,” Utah Department of Technology Services spokeswoman Stephanie Weteling told the Deseret News. “Our cybersecurity team immediately put countermeasures in place and haven’t seen anything since then.”

Other states are also dealing with these kinds of increased traffic. Texas, for example, had a barrage of recent attacks. The Texas Tribune reports it was 10,000 per minute.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a warning that Iran would try to retaliate against the U.S., and the department warned that the country has highly developed cyber-attack assets.