Officials revealed Friday that the New York state’s ethics watchdog has been attacked by hackers.
The web servers of the Joint Committee on Public Ethics were subjected to a “deliberate malicious cyber attack” this week, according to a press release.
State tech employees reported suspicious web activity earlier in the week and disabled the JCOPE system as a precaution. A forensic analysis confirmed the attack, and the agency, which regulates pressure at the Capitol, has remained off duty for safety reasons, officials said.
It was not clear who was behind the cyber attack, or whether there was an information breach. State investigators were investigating the incident.
Lobbyists have been granted extensions to file financial disclosure returns for 300 million dollars a year industry.
“Our first and highest priority is the integrity and integrity of the data entrusted to the commission by the regulating community,” said Sanford Berland, CEO of JCOPE.
“We are working with our IT and law enforcement partners to determine the scope of the attack, to ensure that the response to the incident is comprehensive, and to restart every system as soon as safely possible.”
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