Indiana: Group wrongly claimed it accessed secure state files

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Indiana’s Office of Technology said a group that’s mounted recent attacks on the state’s main website had inaccurately claimed it accessed secure files there.

State broadband executive Graig Lubsen said all of the files that Vikingdom claimed Thursday it had accessed are publicly available files that anyone can access.

He said that “like Google or other search providers, anyone can scan a website,” pull up such non-secure files and read them.

Lubsen said Vikingdom had posted information such as pending legislation and a state environmental agency permit list.

He said all of those documents are public information that’s intentionally made available on the IN.gov website.

Lubsen said Vikingdom had perpetrated attacks on websites across 27 different states by swamping them with service requests that slow down web page load times.