The incident was attributed to a domain name system (DNS) service degradation, according to the state Office of Technology Services (OTS), and was remediated by switching public DNS providers. Communications Director Thomas Mule’ said in an emailed statement that OTS didn’t suspect a cyber attack but would continue to analyze the situation.
“DNS is the heartbeat of the Internet. When our network team identified the issue, they sprang into action and began addressing it,” he said. “They are currently conducting a thorough root cause analysis and will publish their findings once the analysis is complete.”
For context, DNS is like an Internet phone book, matching website addresses, or domain names, to IP addresses — the numerical locations computers use to find one another. DNS also directs email traffic and helps route web requests, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization that manages the system.
In Louisiana, the Office of Motor Vehicles was among the entities affected, but it is unclear to what extent. The office has experienced multiple outages this year, including internal server failures and broader network issues.
