A days-long cyber-attack against the District government has sent city officials scrambling to plug any security flaws that could leave DC.gov exposed to hackers, even as computer experts said it would have been difficult for Washington to protect itself in advance. “We continue to monitor our infrastructure for any denial of service attacks and to mitigate their impact. We will pursue all options available to reduce the impact from future events of this type,” mayoral spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said. “We have gained valuable lessons from the response activities associated with this event.”

Late Wednesday night, District officials “detected an attempted intrusion into its technology infrastructure,” an internal city email obtained by The Washington Examiner showed.