Akron-Summit County library: Ransomware behind cyberattack, hopes website fixed by Monday

The Akron-Summit County Public Library hopes to have its website operating by Monday, but remains plagued by a cyberattack that struck Tuesday.

Carla Davis, marketing communications director with the Akron-Summit County library system, said Saturday that no new services have been restored since an email and social media posts Friday listing the services made available since the attack.

The library system's website contains a boxed message about the outage, but other features are not accessible. The system's IT team is hoping to fix those problems by Monday, she said.

She said it's not known if the cyberattack compromised library subscribers' information.

"It is still too early to tell, and we are still in our investigative stage," she said.

In the Friday posts on Twitter and Facebook, the library system confirmed a ransomware attack was to blame for the outage.

"We confirmed that these issues are the result of a ransomware incident," the post on Twitter and Facebook said. "We are investigating the situation with the assistance of external cybersecurity experts."

The post was not attributed to a library official.

Davis said the outside organization and the library system's IT staff have been able to restore public Wi-Fi and other services. She said there may be some blips along the way, however.

"Our IT team is working diligently to restore services," Davis said. "There may be some intermittent downtime while technical work is being performed."

Ransomware is a type of malware designed to extort money from a victim by locking a computer system and making it unusable. The malware often infects a system when a phishing email attachment is downloaded. It can be difficult or impossible to remove.

Since the ransomware incident began, patrons of the Akron-Summit County main library and the system's branch libraries have been unable to use the system's computers or phones.

The library system includes the main library in downtown Akron and 18 branch libraries throughout Summit County.

"Our phones, Internet, computers, printing, public website, and other services are down," officials with the library system posted on social media Tuesday.

However, the libraries all remained open, and were open starting on Wednesday, said Davis.

"Our libraries are still open, we just don't have computers," Davis said. "We still have our programs, we still have baby time. We can still check out books, we just have to do it manually."

Davis said there's no estimate on when electronic and phone services will be restored.

Outages continued on Saturday, a day after the library emailed a list of which services remain available and which are still down:

Available services listed

• All library locations are open for regular business hours

• All events are still taking place as scheduled

• In-person checkouts, returns and library card registrations

• Digital collection including Libby and hoopla

• Online catalog including My Account

• Public Wi-Fi

• Summer Reading Program will begin as planned on Monday

Services not available as of Friday

• Phones for all library locations

• Akronlibrary.org website

• Public computers and internet access

• Catalog computers

• Public printing

• Hold, overdue and renewal notices

• Online library card registration

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Reporter April Helms can be reached at ahelms@thebeaconjournal.com. Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him ataashworth@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Outage at Akron-Summit County Public Libraries, but branches are open