- The Washington Times - Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Minnesota’s state Senate website remained partially offline Wednesday after experiencing an apparent cyberattack amid protests over the recent death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Several pages of the website continued to be unavailable as the state Senate recovered from one of several recent cybersecurity incidents suffered by Minnesota government agencies.

Minnesota Secretary of the Senate Cal Ludeman told colleagues in a letter Tuesday that a Senate server “was hacked and accessed for several minutes” earlier that morning.

“Ten state agencies, including the Governor’s office, have experienced a security breach from the same hacker group in recent days,” the Republican wrote in the letter, adding that Senate Information Services “brought down the server as a precaution” and was slowly rebuilding its pages as they were confirmed to be secure.

Mr. Ludeman said in the letter that whoever was behind the hack managed to access at least one file on the Senate server, but he did not specify if any data was stolen or damaged.

It was not clear whether the incident was related to protests that have erupted after Floyd was killed on May 25 while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department, which has spawned rallies in streets across the country in addition to digital demonstrations as well.

City of Minneapolis websites briefly went offline Thursday as a result of a cyberattack, the local Star Tribune newspaper reported this week.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, subsequently said that “a very sophisticated” attack was launched at state computers on Saturday as authorities prepared to break up protests in Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul.

“That’s not somebody sitting in their basement,” he said Sunday. “That’s pretty sophisticated.”

• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.

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