NEW BEDFORD – In early July the computer system for New Bedford was identified as being under a ransomware attack.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said this week that the hack was a variant of the RYUK virus, a ransomware virus used by hackers to financially extort a computer network’s operator in exchange for a decryption key.
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The city’s Management Information Systems team shut down the attack when detected. The virus affected 4% of the city’s computers, or 158 workstations. Essential services were said not to be impacted. All damaged workstations were replaced.
New Bedford did not pay the hacker’s fee and rebuilt the city’s server network.
The hackers reportedly requested more than $5 million in bitcoin and rejected a $400,000 payment that would have been covered by insurance.
“We live in a world now that is so interconnected that simply pulling up the proverbial drawbridge is unrealistic,” Mitchell said in his remarks summarizing the ransomware attack. “We will rely on the advice of our experts to guide us, but we must remain constantly vigilant and willing to devote the resources necessary to protect our system from a much more debilitating attack than the one we just experienced. I am committed to making sure our city does just that.”
The city said that it is still in the process of restoring systems and said that it had not found evidence of any personal data compromised by the attack. But it is providing legal notice about the potential of compromised data “out of an abundance of caution.”
