One week after troubled ex-Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh resigned after a criminal probe over her children's book series, the entire Baltimore City computer network system was shut down after a ransomware attack, The Baltimore Sun reports. Across the city, multiple intergovernmental agencies sent employees home Tuesday after email servers and communications platforms went dark. And according to a press meeting on Wednesday morning, the city’s communication system remains down.
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Lester Davis, a spokesman for Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young, said the 911 emergency system was not affected but provided details about how the ransomware paralyzed important communication servers.
City officials had isolated the ransomware to computers associated with severs tied to the city's communication network, Davis said by late Tuesday afternoon, but how the infection penetrated the city's firewalls and the scale of the problem still remains unknown, he said. Davis also had no timeline about when the affected systems would be back online.
Dave Fitz, a spokesman for the FBI Baltimore Field Office, told The Baltimore Sun that special agents from its cyber squad were on site investigating the serious incident.
Don Norris, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said the ransomware attack underlines how municipal governments struggle to protect their networks from hackers.
"You’ve got increasingly sophisticated and very persistent bad guys out there looking for any vulnerability they can find and local governments, including Baltimore, who either don’t have the money or don’t spend it to properly protect their assets," said Norris.
Ransomware is a type of malware designed to block operators from using computer systems or specific data until a ransom is paid.
The Baltimore Sun said the ransomware was identified as RobbinHood. The hackers demanded cryptocurrency as the preferred payment to unlock the files.
"Everybody has been instructed to unplug the Ethernet cable and turn off power to their computers, printers and such," Dorsey said. "It’s apparently spreading computer to computer."
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