City Making Progress on Cyber Attack

Friday, 11 October 2019 at 16:09

The City of Woodstock has built a new trusted network, staff are starting to get email access back and they are hoping everything will be back to normal by mid next week.

WOODSTOCK - Slowly but surely, things are starting to get back to normal after a cyber attack on the City of Woodstock.

City employee's including police and Fire have not had access to their network or emails for three weeks now. CAO David Creery says they are starting to get things back online now.

"So over the past three weeks the City has reconstructed a trusted, a new trusted network of servers and has restored email functionality completely. The email functionality is available for all City staff, however we are deploying to staff on an ongoing basis, staff have to come in and re-authenticate their account and set new passwords before being able to receive email. In terms of computer connectivity, there are a small number of users who have been cleared for connection to the new trusted network. We are currently working on the next wave of users to connect to the new trusted network, we hope that that next wave will be connected by mid-next week."

Creery says in terms of computer connectivity, there are a small number of users who have been cleared for connection to the new trusted network, they are currently working on the next wave of users to connect to the new trusted network and they are hoping that wave will be connected by Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

He notes this is still an active investigation and they have not received any formal ransom demands at this time.

"No ransom demand other than the simple emails that were provided to contact the threat actors. We did not make use of those emails, we have not directly/indirectly through any other agent made contact with the threat actors. We continue to focus on a recovery plan on our own, using our own back up information. So at this point we have no contact."

Creery adds they do expect a huge backlog of emails when everything is completely back up and running.

"If anyone has sent the City an email over the last three weeks and not received a response, it is likely due to the fact that we have not received the email and we will likely not receive the email, it will not come in to our system. So we would ask that anybody resend an email over the last three weeks, if they are looking for a response from City staff and we continue to thank the public for their patience as we recover from this incident. And also it may take some time for us to respond to those emails as there will likely be a significant backlog."