Columbus continues investigating cyber security ‘incident’

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — The City of Columbus is still investigating a cyber security threat that has been impacting its systems since last Thursday.

As of now, city employees are still not able to send or receive external emails. City officials said 911, 311 and payroll are all back to normal operations.

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City leaders said the incident started through a malicious email, but aren’t offering any further details.

NBC4 called several city departments Wednesday with questions and they have all directed us back to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Andrew Ginther’s office said it has no updates to share outside what he said on Tuesday.

“We want to share as much information as we can, be as transparent as we can. But obviously, we have not totally, you know, figured out what happened here, who was behind it and how we can do what we need to do to prevent it from happening again,” Ginther said.

Denise Bergstrom is the chairperson of the cyber security program at Franklin University.

She said knowing this started from a malicious email, the problem could be one of several things. She said it could be to get personal information, account numbers, or even something bigger.

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“And that’s the danger of it,” she said. “It’s so simple. Now, obviously, an attack like this is probably more complicated. It was probably a targeted attack at somebody at the city to be able to gain access to the systems because it would have a lot of potential for terror.”

The city said that at this time, they do not know if this is ransomware. Bergstrom said if there is a hacker, the FBI could get involved, depending on the location. She said these things do take time to fix because investigators have to make sure the threat does not spread.

“So they’re doing their due diligence,” Bergstrom said. “It takes time. Unfortunately, it takes a lot less time to make the problem than it does to fix it. It’s a factor of a number of things. How many systems were affected based on how much that particular user had access to, but also if they were doing real-time backups, they’ve backed up the infection, they’ve backed up this malware. So they have to make sure that they go back and purge any backups.”

Bergstrom said this should serve as a reminder of the importance of cyber security best practices at work and home.

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“But the reason these attacks work is because we are so busy and so prone to just get things done, and so clicking on a link when you’re not 100% sure, you don’t even think about it. For a lot of us, that’s become second nature because you know what? What bad thing could happen? Well, now we know what bad thing could happen, right?” Bergstrom said.

The city said it is working with law enforcement to stop the threat. They have not given a timeline for when the problem will be fully fixed.

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