After late nights and a few long weekends, the City of Chandler has fully recovered from a ransomeware attack that took place July 31st.
According to city manager James Melson, the ransomware attack originated in Russia and is called the RYUK virus.
“It either came through in an email or something of that nature, but we don’t know for sure how we got it,” Melson said. “The IT people that worked on it couldn’t really tell us exactly.”
The attack compromised four computers and locked up the server that the entire system operated on, including the accounting software. Fortunately, Melson said no information was stolen.
There was a demand for $178,000, but the city refused to pay.
Although three months of data was lost, Melson said they had paper records and were able to hand enter the information back into the system.
“We just worked weekends and nights and put it all back in by hand, that wasn’t backed up.” he said.
The city had to start all over by erasing information, reloading the backup system and purchasing four new computers to replace the infected computers.
“We’re up and running,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse.”
In order to prevent this from happening in the future, Melson said they will stay alert with scam emails, obtain good virus protection and make sure their system is fully backed up.