The Alabama Legislature's email was hacked Thursday morning by an outside entity, causing lawmakers to briefly avoid using their accounts while the issue was addressed.
Secretary of the Senate Pat Harris said Thursday afternoon the virus appeared to come from a server in India. The Legislature's IT department shut down the server, and Harris said the virus was contained within 30 minutes of discovery.
"We've had them before," he said. "Somebody hacks in to try to get in and run a virus through. I don't know anything they were trying to get into securely, as far as the Legislature concerned."
The scope of the breach was not initially known, but Brunson White, the state Secretary of Information Technology, said other state agencies did not appear affected.
"We were on this pretty quick, and we circled the wagons with all the emails," he said.
The Legislature's email operates on an independent server, Harris said.
The motivations for the hack were unknown, but both Harris and White urged anyone who received a suspicious email to treat it carefully. State officials were still monitoring the systems.
"We haven't found anybody who has opened it," Harris said. "It doesn't mean (nobody) opened it."
House Speaker Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, announced the breach following a debate on the state education budget late Thursday morning, and told members to refrain from opening any emails or attachments while the issue was addressed.
Alabama's computer systems have been vulnerable to outside hacking in the past. The group Anonymous claimed to have entered the state's computer systems in 2012 in what it described as response to the state's controversial illegal immigration bill, passed in 2011.
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