The November elections in Virginia shocked the nation as Republicans swept back into power.
The GOP not only won the governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general races, but took back the House of Delegates as well.
But then the Virginia General Assembly got hit with a massive cyberattack right after the GOP took back control.
To say the November elections in Virginia were a surprise is an understatement.
Democrats just didn’t understand how angry voters were over the economy and their social engineering in the schools through Critical Race Theory and transgender activism.
Even after multiple rapes were found to have been covered up in Loudoun County public schools in order to protect the transgender agenda, Democrats stuck to their guns on the issue.
And they got wiped out.
Republicans ran on these issues and also on the pro-life issue and the Second Amendment and swept the top three races as well as the House of Delegates (the State Senate was not up in 2021).
But then, shortly after the final recount was done and it became crystal clear that the GOP would have a 52-48 majority in the State House, the Virginia General Assembly had been hit by a ransomware attack that affected key legislative systems just as legislators and staffers were preparing for the 2022 session that begins on January 12.
Due to the attack, multiple state agency websites were offline for a week.
The Legislative Information System (LIS), which hosts current and proposed legislation and the Code of Virginia, warned in an error message, “We’re experiencing a service outage with some of our servers. The Budget Portal, Law Portal, Reports to the General Assembly, and some other data may not be accessible. Our
team is currently working to restore the service. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
The cyberattack began Friday, December 10 and an email sent to delegates and their staffs said efforts to resolve the issues impacting internal servers started on Sunday evening.
Internal servers at the legislature, bill drafting systems, and the General Assembly voicemail servers were all impacted by the attack.
Clerk of the Senate Susan Schaar told The Virginia Star that legislators were notified of the attack on Monday and that the investigation is ongoing.
Delegate Nick Freitas (R-Culpeper), a member of the House Communications, Technology and Innovation Committee, said that legislators only received a general notice.
Specific details of the attack are unclear, but ransomware attacks typically use software to block access to data until the data owner pays the attackers or they may threaten to destroy data or release it to the public.
While ransomware attacks are not new, this attack, coming shortly after attacks on the NRA and other conservative-leaning organizations is leading some observers to question whether there is a new, concerted effort to go after Republican and right-leaning organizations.
In recent months there has been increased activity by Communist Chinese hackers and ChiComm government spies here in the United States.
Most of these activities have focused on government installations and conservative and libertarian operations and politicians.
While there is no word yet on just who launched the cyber attack on the Virginia General Assembly, the timing of the attack is certainly interesting.
As of the writing of this article the General Assembly’s systems went back up, only to go down again for “maintenance.”
We will keep you updated on this story as it develops.