In mid-March the U.S. Health and Human Services Department got slammed with a cyber-attack, suspected at the time to come from a foreign state, that overloaded its servers with millions of hits over several hours, and also led to false rumors about the pandemic.

“Text message rumors of a national #quarantine are FAKE. There is no national lockdown,” tweeted the National Security Council just before midnight. “@CDCgov has and will continue to post the latest guidance on #COVID19.”

“We are aware of a cyber incident related to the Health and Human Services computer networks, and the federal government is investigating this incident thoroughly,” John Ullyot, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement at the time.

Cyberattacks have surged in recent years. A recent survey found that healthcare providers experienced triple the number of breaches to their records in 2019 than they did in 2018.

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