Several Ohio government websites were hacked with pro-ISIS messages Sunday morning.
Affected sites include:
- Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections
- Casino Control
- Ohio First Lady
- Office of Workforce Transformation
- Office of Health Transformation
- Inspector General
- Ohio governor
- Medicaid
The sites' homepages were replaced with the same black background accompanied by music. By 1 p.m., all of the affected sites appeared to no longer be online.
The top of the pages read, "Hacked By Team System DZ."
Below that, the sites said, "Anti: Govt all word. You will be held accountable Trump, you and all your people for every drop of blood flowing in Muslim countries."
Toward the bottom, the sites said, "I Love Islamic state." The Team System Dz Facebook page was also included.
A spokesperson for the governor's office issued the following statement Sunday afternoon:
"As soon as we were notified of the situation we immediately began to correct it and will continue to monitor until fully resolved."
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services provided the following statement:
“State of Ohio IT staff are working to restore the computer systems that were impacted today. All affected servers have been taken off line and we are investigating how these hackers were able to deface these websites. We also are working with law enforcement to better understand what happened.”
Joseph Marquette, President and Founder of Accellis Technology Group in Cleveland, says this incident looks to be more of a defacing than a data breach.
“It’s really more of something called "hacktivism" where they’re just looking to promote their own cause, create some measure of fear, but if they were truly looking to steal information or data, odds are they were gonna do it in a much more subversive and secretive way,” said Marquette.
USA Today reports that Team System DZ is described as a group of "anti-Israeli Arab teenagers," according to Zone-H.
According to VICE, Team System DZ has hacked numerous random websites, including the University of New Brunswick's student union site and a Canadian food truck's sandwich site. The Daily Mail reports the group hacked an English rugby team's site.
Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel posted the following in response to the site hacks: