The website of the federal agency responsible for regulating coal mine safety was taken offline Wednesday night after a massive and coordinated cyber attack.
The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, website contains employment data on coal mines. It also offers mine operators tools designed to report data or checking compliance status. The site has been down since April 23, according to one agency official.
“After a recent incident, the MSHA website is offline for remediation and maintenance activities,” MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere said in a press statement. “The department is diligently working on securely bringing the website back online. At this time, there is no indication of data loss.”
Coal operators can continue to use the site’s features to upload important information and check the status of previously uploaded records, but some of the data might be out of date, Louviere noted.
MSHA’s website is still undergoing glitches as of Thursday morning. A warning label was placed at the top of the agency’s website that reads, “Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is still undergoing maintenance and some of the content on our website may not be current.”
The attack comes as recent reports show cyber espionage is on the rise. Cyber espionage group Dragonfly, for instance, is reportedly responsible for launching a cyber attack on energy infrastructure in the U.S. and Europe.
Dragonfly attempted similar attacks between 2011 and 2014, before researchers at Symantec discovered the attacks. The group appears to be active again and has been carrying out a string of attacks termed “Dragonfly 2.0” for the past two years, according to Symantec.
Dragonfly uses spear phishing, trojan software, and watering hole websites to steal official credentials and access centers of operation. The group is well organized, documenting hacking attempts through screenshots and describing each step in the photos’ labels, Axios reported in September 2017.
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