HARRISBURG, Pa. — Parts of the Pennsylvania Courts website remain inaccessible Monday night following a cyberattack on Sunday.
Website access was limited by a denial of service hack, something Messiah University Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity David Bibighaus explains is not very complicated.
"There's nothing magical, you don't have to have any special access to the victim's machine," he said. "You're just overwhelming them with electronic noise."
Thousands of these attacks happen daily to a wide range of victims.
"If you have a web server, an email server, DNS, any kind of system where you're offering some service on the internet, you can be a victim of this," Bibighaus said.
While the attack does raise concerns, the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts released a statement reading in part:
"There is still no indication that any court data has been compromised... the courts have remained open and accessible."
Cybersecurity experts, like Allan Jacks with Morefield in Camp Hill, say they’ve seen a rise in cyber threats.
"It is becoming more prevalent," Jacks said. "The community is becoming more and more aware of what's going on and how it impacts them."
This has also led to a rise in demand for security measures provided by companies like Morefield, or InterMixIT in Harrisburg.
"The demand for IT security and properly positioning an organization to have success using the technology is skyrocketing right now," InterMixIT Co-founder Andy Strouse said.
However, Dr. Nazli Hardy at Millersville University says the Commonwealth is not a specific target.
"We will always have attacks," she said. "I don't think Pennsylvania is particularly vulnerable over any other state."
In recent months, critical services in the state have been hit. A water treatment plant in western Pennsylvania was targeted by a Iranian-hackers in November of last year, and just weeks ago, Bucks County's EMS systems were hit with an attack.
Bibighaus admits attacks on critical infrastructure are especially dangerous.
"If you are an emergency management service, a 911 operator," Bibighaus said. "If you're a hospital and you have some specific system that you need to get an answer in a timely manner, then it would matter."
Strouse, Jacks and other experts advise precautionary measures to prevent and respond to these attacks.
"Understanding the plan that needs to be in place for when XYZ happens then we take the right route with speed, so we can make sure that we're recovered swiftly," Strouse said.
"I think there's some good things to take out of this," Jacks said. "They obviously had an incident response plan in place, knowing what to do, when to do it and actions to take."
As for who is responsible for the attack, Dr. Hardy says that could be difficult to figure out. "Even with the most sophisticated software it's still quite difficult to pinpoint the exact person."
The FBI and Homeland Security are currently investigating the incident.