City of Oakland Declares State of Emergency After Ransomware Attack

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Oakland has declared a local state of emergency because of the impact of a ransomware attack that forced the City to take all its IT systems offline on February 8th. Interim City Administrator G. Harold Duffey declared (PDF) a state of emergency to allow the City of Oakland to expedite orders, materials and equipment procurement, and activate emergency workers when needed. 'Today, Interim City Administrator, G. Harold Duffey issued a local state of emergency due to the ongoing impacts of the network outages resulting from the ransomware attack that began on Wednesday, February 8,' a statement issued today reads. The incident did not affect core services, with the 911 dispatch and fire and emergency resources all working as expected.

While last week's ransomware attack only impacted non-emergency services, many systems taken down immediately after the incident to contain the threat are still offline. The ransomware group behind the attack is currently unknown, and the City is yet to share any details regarding ransom demands or data theft from compromised systems. 'The City's IT Department is working with a leading forensics firm to perform an extensive incident response and analysis, as well as with additional cybersecurity and technology firms on recovery and remediation efforts,' the statement said. 'This continues to be an ongoing investigation with multiple local, state, and federal agencies involved.'

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