On February 8th, a ransomware attack forced the City of Oakland to shut down all its IT systems. In response, Interim City Administrator G. Harold Duffey declared a local state of emergency to expedite the acquisition of orders, materials, and equipment and activate emergency personnel as needed. Today, the city announced this decision in a statement, citing the ongoing impact of network outages resulting from the ransomware attack as the reason for the state of emergency.
The incident did not affect core services. The 911 dispatch and fire and emergency resources continued to operate as expected. However, the ransomware attack from last week impacted some non-emergency services, which led to several systems being taken offline immediately after the incident to contain the threat. The identity of the ransomware group responsible for the attack is currently unknown, and the City has not revealed any information about ransom demands or data theft from the compromised systems. The City’s IT Department is working with a leading forensics firm to extensively respond and analyze the incident. Additionally, they are collaborating with other cybersecurity and technology firms to aid in recovery and remediation efforts, according to the statement.
In July 2019, Louisiana Governor John Edwards declared a state of emergency in response to a series of ransomware attacks that targeted the state’s school districts. The attacks caused widespread disruptions throughout the state’s educational systems by encrypting and taking offline the IT systems of several school districts, including Morehouse, Sabine, Monroe City, and Ouachita.
According to Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow, ransomware has impacted at least six local U.S. governments this year, with data theft occurring in at least four of those cases. Microsoft announced in January that it has identified over 100 ransomware gangs that deployed more than 50 unique ransomware families by the end of last year.
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