Tulsa, Oklahoma, is reportedly the latest in a long line of American cities to have fallen victim to a ransomware attack.
The attack, which occurred on Friday evening, caused the city’s IT security teams to shut down many of Tula’s internal systems over the weekend “out of an abundance of caution” while they worked around the clock at the weekend in an attempt to restore operations from backups.
At the time of writing, the City of Tulsa’s official website remains inaccessible.
Few details have been shared about the nature of the ransomware attack, although speaking to the press a Tulsa spokesperson said that no employee information had been compromised by the hackers, and that 911 and emergency response teams continue to operate normally.
Tulsa residents using the city’s 311 local information service have been told to expect a longer wait time than normal due to high call volume.
There is no word on what ransom demand the criminals might have made, or whether the city of Tulsa is considering paying its extortionists or not.
There are, of course, difficult questions for cities and government departments to consider when deciding how to respond to a ransomware attack.
An obvious danger of paying a ransom demand is that you are encouraging other extortionists to launch similar attacks. If you publicly declare you are prepared to pay a ransom, that does nothing to discourage others to target you in the future.
Furthermore, a strong message is sent out to other criminals that ransomware extortion is an effective way to generate income – putting everyone on the internet at an increased risk of attack.
However, if ransoms are not paid the victim – whether it be a local gover ..
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