Oregon secretary of state website back online following attack

The website for Oregon’s secretary of state is back online after shutting down for 20 days following a cyber-attack that exposed, among other things, the bank account information of the state’s political candidates.

Secretary of State Kate Brown announced Monday the online systems, including the state’s Central Business Registry and ORESTAR, the state’s online campaign finance reporting system, were operational again.

“I appreciate the enormous patience that Oregonians have demonstrated during the website outage,” Brown said. “I’d also like to thank everyone in this office who worked incredibly long hours to restore these important services as quickly and securely as possible.”

On Feb. 4, Secretary of State Information System Administrators detected an unauthorized intrusion and shut down online applications as a precaution.

After a thorough investigation, the system was refortified and the online applications were gradually brought up to achieve a smooth transition to full service, a process that began this past weekend.

One of the security measures taken was the deletion of all user passwords for the Central Business Registry and ORESTAR, causing end users to reset passwords upon relogging into the system.

“Online security is a hugely important issue,” Brown said. “Oregonians rightfully expect that their government will continue to use technology to improve customer service while making sure those systems are secure.”

The state allowed for a grace period for campaign finance reporting during the outage, waiving civil penalties for late transactions reported during that time.

Officials warned there could be site glitches from the site’s relaunch as is sometimes common when major Web applications are restarted.

Applications are expected to continue to be taken down temporarily in order to attend to the needs of the system, Brown said.