Amid shutdown, agencies scramble to secure federal websites
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued an urgent call for government agencies to secure their web infrastructure in the midst of a partial government shutdown, as first reported by Cyberscoop. The department sent out an emergency directive on Tuesday afternoon, alerting government agencies to the threat and recommending agencies immediately secure their DNS records with two-factor authentication. But with much of the government still subject to the ongoing shutdown, it’s unclear how quickly agencies can respond to the directive.
DNS records are a central feature of the web, a kind of online phone book that connects URLs (like dhs.gov) to IP addresses (like 104.97.73.157). If an attacker can compromise those records, they…
