(BCN) — The city of Oakley in eastern Contra Costa County is still responding to a ransomware attack that knocked its computer network offline and prompted a declaration of a state of emergency, city officials said Sunday. The city activated its Emergency Operations Center after a ransomware attack on Thursday afternoon.
A ransomware attack occurs when someone encrypts files and demands ransom to decrypt them. The encryption makes the files and the systems that rely on them unusable, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
“Since the incident began, the City’s IT Division, with the help of cybersecurity, forensics and technology experts, has been conducting incident response and analysis, as well as working to recover from and remediate the incident,” the city said in a release sent out Sunday.
The city has not identified details of exactly how systems were affected, but building, business licenses, engineering and planning services continued to be impacted as of Sunday night. Administrative, code enforcement and recreational services are expected to return to “substantially normal” on Monday, the city said.
The city also said phone services have been restored, though emergency services such as 911, police, fire and ambulance were never impacted by the attack. Assistant City Manager Danielle Navarro said Friday that they are committed to being as transparent as possible with the community without compromising the investigation.
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