The City of Tulsa, the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma has been hit by a ransomware attack. It forced the City to shut down its systems to prevent the further spread of the attack.
Tulsa has a population of approximately 400,000 people who have been now affected by disruption of services.
On the weekend, ransomware hackers conducted an attack on Tulsa’s network, according to the city’s mayor:
“We identified malware on our servers and as soon as we did that, in an abundance of caution, we shut all of our systems down.” Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum told local media KRMG in an interview.
Bynum says that employees are back to work and the City’s phone systems are running. This means anyone who needs to conduct business with the City can do so over the phone. He added the incident did not affect 911 or emergency response services.
However, city residents can not access online services like bill payment systems, utility billing, and services through email.
“The City of Tulsa is experiencing technical difficulties on many outward facing programs that help serve the citizens of Tulsa due to a ransomware attack.”
At the time of writing, websites for the City of Tulsa, the Tulsa City Council, Tulsa Police, and the Tulsa 311 are down for maintenance.
On Facebook, the City assured customer information has not been compromised:
“No customer information has been comprised, but residents will not be able to access City websites and there will be delays in network services,” the Tulsa Police Department said in a post on its Facebook page.
Recently, ransomware gangs has demanded from victims record million-dollar ransoms.
To help combat the increasing threat of ransomware, a public-party coalition of more than 50 experts formed a Ransomware Task Force that will providing recommendations and solutions to lawmakers. These solutions will include mandatory disclosures of ransom payments to be available internationally to help organizations prevent to and mitigate ransomware attacks.
