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Ransomware attack behind over week-long City of Hamilton service disruption

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City of Hamilton officials say a ransomware attack is behind a more than week-long service disruption impacting municipal programs and systems.

Mayor Andrea Horwath and city manager Marnie Cluckie confirmed the nature of the attack in a virtual press conference Monday afternoon.

The update from city officials additionally reassured residents that it is not believed any personal information was accessed by the hackers.

At this time, there is still no indication of how long it could take to fully resolve the issue that has the potential to drag on for weeks, or even months.

Monday began with city councillors holding an emergency meeting with officials, lawyers and consultants as the mayor described the cyber attack as a “major danger.”

READ MORE: City of Hamilton cancels committee meetings amid ongoing cybersecurity incident

The council then went into a closed session for around two hours. Once it concluded, the mayor referred questions to the city manager.

City councillors, one after another, refused to speak on the cyberattack and all referred back to the city manager.

One cybersecurity expert says the city is dealing with a crisis.

“Currently what’s probably happening is there’s forensic experts, cyber security experts and IT professionals that are working together to do one of two things. One is, does the malware or whatever caused the incident still exist within the network, and what systems were impacted, what data was taken?” said cybersecurity analyst Ritesh Kotak.

The city says most services are running, but some are still being done manually.

Hamilton’s Director of Human Resources says they’re doing their best to ensure employees get their pay and that they will be told if there is any evidence of a breach of personal information.

WATCH MORE: Cybersecurity breach discussed at Hamilton’s city council meeting

“Right now we’re just assuring them that their pay is going to be administered properly as best as we can and in terms of privacy as soon as that information is available we’ll share it with them.” said Lora Fontana.

A number of city services have been down since Feb. 25, including city phone lines, emails and websites, HSR driver’s computerized onboard schedule and Hamilton Public Health’s ability to access updated childhood immunization records, among other services.

All critical services, including transit, water, wastewater treatment and emergency services have remained operational throughout the attack.

Cemeteries across the city remain open and staffed, though phone lines continue to be non-operational and all genealogical information remains unavailable. The city says delays could come for cemetery services such as burials and sales with transactions having to be processed manually.

Child care services run through the city remain open, though online portals for both therapeutic referrals and registry are still down. Email inquiries can be used to register for both these services.

Similarly, long-term care facilities under the city’s domain are fully functional, though main phone lines are not working as the attack continues. Details on how to reach each facility have been made available through the city’s website.

WATCH MORE: Cybersecurity incident knocks out crucial phone, email and map systems: City of Hamilton

Permits submitted to the city are also being affected. Those applications submitted prior to Feb. 25 are available for staff review and while residents can still submit through the portal, the city says staff cannot access those entered into the system after that date.

Limitations are being reflected in city mapping technology as well, with both the interactive zone mapping and find my ward features of the city’s website unavailable.

While Hamilton’s Public Libraries have kept their doors open, a multitude of services have been disrupted. These include WiFi, public computers, printing, scanning and photocopying, self-check kiosks and virtual programming.

At city hall itself, services are running with some limitations. At this time, all payments can only be made through cash or cheque, tax payments may only be made if the property owner has the tax roll number and tax stub and can show photo identification that verifies the address, invoices can be paid if the resident has a copy of it themselves and all green cart service request are unavailable.

Meetings at city hall have felt the impact, with all committee meetings on hold until March 15 as an internet outage in council chambers continues.

Online payments for many inspections, permits, licensing and donations are unavailable, along with the city’s job applications portal.