The Peninsula suburb of Foster City was recovering from a cyberattack Thursday that took out many of its services for multiple hours, authorities said.
A ransomware attack paralyzed the city early in the morning, knocking out the police department’s emergency phone number and prompting a declaration of a state of emergency.
The attack only lasted a few hours and services are back online, but officials warned that residents’ public information could be at risk and urged residents and businesses to update their login information.
“The public’s safety is our highest priority, so we encourage members of our community to take precautions that would best assure the security of their personal information,” City Manager Stefan Chatwin said in a statement. “Foster City staff, with the assistance of outside cyber security experts, are working diligently to restore the integrity of the City’s system and ensure there are no further security issues impacting services to our community.”
By Friday, officials said they had initiated “incident response protocols” as a precaution due to suspicious activity.
“We have taken most of our computer systems offline while we ensure the security of our network,” the Friday news release said. “We are engaging with independent cybersecurity specialists to assist with the investigation and remediation.”
