A ransomware attack disrupted services in the City of Oakland

A ransomware attack caused massive disruption to the City of Oakland last week, which forced the town leaders to take all systems offline until everything was clear.

Fortunately, the cybercriminal campaign has not impacted the critical services of the town after the city representatives claimed that their emergency resources and 911 dispatch were unaffected by the attack.

 

The City of Oakland is currently investigating the cybersecurity incident.

 

Based on the report, the IT Department of the City of Oakland is having an alliance with law enforcement to investigate the cybercriminal campaign and restore services.

In addition, the city is creating a response plan to address the issue according to industry best practices and will announce further details regarding the attack as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the residents within the city should expect delays in the affected service. The city’s government assured everyone that they are closely monitoring the situation and sending updated information when something happens.

However, the identity of the ransomware group is still unknown, and Oakland leaders have yet to announce information about ransom demands or stolen data from infected systems.

The City of Oakland’s representative could still need to disclose additional details regarding the cybercriminal campaign even though numerous inquiries about the campaign have reached them.

An Oakland report which revealed the cybersecurity issue against the city last week claimed that a ransomware attack might have allegedly been the cause of the city-wide service outage.

Some relevant individuals also claimed that the attack might be from the city’s IT department under-staffing, which exposed the sector to ransomware attacks from threat actors.

The United States has faced at least six ransomware attacks against its local governments this year. Four of these confirmed attacks have led to data loss.

Furthermore, a recent tally in January showed that ransomware operations had disrupted more than 200 large organisations in the United States public sector in 2022. These organisations are mainly government services, healthcare firms, and academic institutions.

Cybersecurity experts believe that there are more than 100 ransomware gangs that have already launched their ransomware strains against the US which could impact the country for almost the entirety of the year.