Minneapolis systems temporarily brought down by hackers

City government systems in Minneapolis were temporarily brought down by a cyberattack early Thursday as the city was grappling with raging protests over the police killing of George Floyd.

A spokesperson for Minneapolis told The Hill that some of the city’s public websites and systems were temporarily shut down by a denial of service (DoS) attack, which involves malicious hackers flooding a server with traffic until it crashes.

Officials were able to bring back 95 percent of affected websites and systems within hours of the attack, with the spokesperson saying that the city expected 100 percent of systems to be back online by the end of the day.

The spokesperson did not identify who was behind the cyberattack on the city or whether it was linked to any protests. The official said there was no evidence that any data was stolen or compromised.

“Although these types of attacks are not completely unavoidable, they are fairly common, and the City of Minneapolis has proactive measures in place to respond to and mitigate disruptions when they do occur,” the spokesperson said. “The City of Minneapolis IT continues to monitor its cyber platforms to ensure further disruption doesn’t happen again.”

Minneapolis officials grappled with a second night of violent protests over the death of Floyd, a black man who died in police custody after an officer placed a knee on his neck to detain him. Some demonstrators looted local stores and clashed with police in the streets, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets.