City of Columbus yet to recover from ransomware attack that disrupted IT systems

The City of Columbus in the U.S. state of Ohio says it is still struggling to get its IT systems back on track following a significant ransomware attack it suffered more that a month ago.

 

Earlier this month, Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said in a post of X, formerly Twitter, that the City became a victim of a cyber attack on July 18 and its IT team was working diligently to recover the affected systems.

 

As a part of the recovery process, the team had to take several systems offline, but emergency services such as 911, citizen hotline 311 and employee payroll systems remained operational.

 

In a separate statement, the City said that its investigation has identified a “foreign cyber threat actor attempting to disrupt the city’s IT infrastructure, in a possible effort to deploy ransomware and solicit a ransom payment from the city.”

 

While the City claimed to have disrupted the ransomware attack, it said it is in the process of identifying the “amount of city data potentially accessed.”

 

In a recent press release, Mayor Ginther said that the city’s IT team is working round the clock to restore the affected systems. However, he could not share a timeline of when the systems will be back online.

 

 

Ginther added that the personal identifiable data that was released on the dark web included a database from the Prosecutor’s office. The compromised data belonged to individuals involved with the justice system including defendants, victims and witnesses.

 

The City is working with the FBI and other relevant law enforcement authorities to investigate the ransomware attack.

 

The Rhysida ransomware group recently claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack and listed the City as a victim on its data leak site. The hacker group said it is in possession of 6.5 terabytes of data, including databases, internal logins and password, a full dump of servers with emergency services applications of the city and access from city cameras.