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Cyberattack hits U.S. health department amid coronavirus crisis – Source Reuters Tech News

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a key part of the federal response to the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak, was hit by an unspecified “cyber incident” on Sunday, officials said on Monday.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said there was “no data breach.” National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot said HHS networks “are functioning normally at this time” and that officials are investigating the matter.

Department spokeswoman Caitlin Oakley said there was a “significant increase in activity on HHS cyber infrastructure” on Sunday but that HHS was “fully operational.”

Neither Ullyot nor Oakley gave other details as to the nature of the problem. Bloomberg News, citing unnamed sources, said there had been multiple hacking incidents that appeared aimed at slowing the department’s systems.

On Twitter, a Bloomberg reporter said the incident involved “overloading the HHS servers with millions of hits” – an apparent reference to a…

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Source Reuters Tech News

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