The city government of Pensacola, Florida, is dealing with widespread phone outages due to a cyberattack announced over the weekend.
City spokesperson Jason Wheeler told Recorded Future News that officials are experiencing phone issues across city departments that are causing delays in receiving service through the 311 Citizen Support system.
Emergency phone numbers like 911 are still operating, and Wheeler said non-emergency numbers can be used to contact the Pensacola Police Department and Fire Department.
The city has also created alternate phone numbers for the energy department, sanitation, public works, engineering, housing and other departments.
Wheeler declined to answer questions about whether the incident involved ransomware, if the attackers had identified themselves, and if a ransom had been paid.
Over the weekend, the Pensacola News Journal said Wheeler notified them of the cyberattack, reiterating that emergency services like police and fire were not affected by the outages.
Pensacola sits right on the border of Florida and Alabama,is about an hour away from Mobile and has more than 53,000 residents.
The city has faced ransomware attackers before, dealing with hackers from the Maze ransomware gang during an incident in 2019.
The gang stole 2 gigabytes of data but the city refused to pay the ransom, instead spending about $300,000 to recover from the incident, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
The city was forced to notify more than 57,000 people that their information had been accessed during the attack.
The attack on Pensacola is the 21st on a local government in the U.S. in 2024, according to ransomware expert Brett Callow.
The incident comes just days after Birmingham, Alabama confirmed it was dealing with its own widespread outages due to a cyberattack.
New Mexico's Bernalillo County, with nearly 700,000 residents, released a statement last Friday warning that the Administrative Office of the District Attorneys has experienced a ransomware attack that is affecting at least three district attorney's offices in New Mexico.
Local governments outside the U.S. have also been in the crosshairs.
The District of North Vancouver dealt with its own ransomware attack last week and the U.K.'s Leicester City Council said it is in the process of recovering from a cyber incident that shut down its phone lines as well as IT systems.
Nations Direct Mortgage alerts 83,000 to personal data leaks from December cyberattack.
Jonathan has worked across the globe as a journalist since 2014.
Before moving back to New York City, he worked for news outlets in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia.
He previously covered cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Mon, 18 Mar 2024 20:50:16 +0000