Local city still working to restore services after ransomware attack
A Montgomery County city keeps working to restore many of its services after a ransomware attack.
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News Center 7′s Taylor Robertson spoke to Huber Heights City Manager Richard Dzik who said at this time they are slowly getting city services back up and running.
“Today, we’re actually able to say that the police department can now issue accident reports and incident reports to the public as they request them,” Dzik said.
Dzik said the city immediantly brought in a cybersecurity firm to begin the investigation.
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“They have not advised us if any data has been taken,” Dzik said.
At this time, city officials have received new devices from Verizon to use in the meantime.
Cybersecurity expert Dave Lavinder with Deepseas Chief of Cyber Operations told News Center 7 this is normal.
“Ransomware is really just a fancy computer virus that has a very, very specific goal of encrypting files,” Lavinder said. “Like if somebody got on your computer and password protected every file you have, you can still access the computer but you go to open a Word doc, it’s encrypted.”
This is why the city needed new devices.
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“Essentially, Huber Heights is reacting to the fact that their entire organizational network is down, but they still need to conduct business,” Lavinder said.
Lavinder said the people behind the attack are not just encrypting the data, but stealing it in hopes the organization will pay for it back.
“It’s completely business-driven and ransomware has become a huge, very formal organization,” Lavinder said.
Lavinder said investigators will be looking into how the data was stolen, what data was stolen, and then work to figure out how to not let it happen again. Unfortunately, these crimes are increasingly more common.
“Just last month, there were 336 ransomware attacks across the world that we observed,” Lavinder said.
The city manager said Huber Heights residents who have any questions about how the investigation is going can call the city or check their website and social media for daily updates.
