Cybersecurity

Maine state website briefly shutdown by hackers

Maine.gov website
Source: Maine.gov

The state of Maine's government website was briefly knocked offline earlier Monday due a "denial-of-service attack," a spokesperson for the state said.

"Attacks to high-profile government websites are very common, and a thorough investigation is underway. The important thing to note is that this was in no way a security breach, and we currently have no evidence to suggest that any personal information has been compromised," said Alexander Willette, director of communications for the state in an email to CNBC.

A hacker group under the Twitter handle "Vikingdom2015" has taken responsibility to for the so called "denial-of-service" attack on both maine.gov and New Hampshire's visitnh.gov, which was also shut down briefly. The group also claims it was behind past attacks on Oklahoma City's official website.

A spokesperson for New Hampshire confirmed that its website, visitnh.gov, was also down earlier on Monday due to a denial-of-service attack.

"The Division of Travel and Tourism, the Department of Information of Technology and its service providers are working together to determine more details about the root cause of the issue," said Amy Bassett, assistant director of the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development. "At this time, our service provider reports that they have no evidence suggesting that visitnh.gov was the specific target."

See Vikingdom2015's tweet