A week after the Minnesota courts website was completely shut down for 10 days in December, we’re finally finding out why.

The Minnesota Judicial Branch says its website was the target of two distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In a DDoS attack, a website or server is overwhelmed with network traffic until it can no longer function for legitimate users.

The MJB says the attacks in December left their site unusable to members of the public for several hours, and was eventually completely shut down from Dec. 21 to 31 in order to install additional safeguards.

Officials say no personal data was breached as a result of the attack — DDoS attacks are typically used to sabotage a website or server, rather than steal information.

Authorities say initial forensics show the attacks were primarily launched from servers in Asia and Canada, and international authorities are investigating.

Source: http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/01/08/minnesota-courts-website-target-of-ddos-attacks/