‘Cyberhack is bad for everyone’
Fallout continues after cybersecurity breach on city operations earlier this week
These days, the public library in downtown Hamilton is a lifeline for Mike Bray now that his housing is in flux.
But during the ongoing fallout of a cyberattack on city operations, his options at the library are more limited.
“I’ll be honest. I would have loved to have been able to access the internet here,” Bray said Friday afternoon.
The 49-year-old said he has no place to live after his time couchsurfing with friends for a spell ran its course.
“If the computers were up and running, I’d be doing job-searching, looking for like a room to rent.”
That’s much easier on a computer than relying on his cellphone, Bray said. Bray was in the same boat as many others relying on cellphone data plans and setting up hot spots for laptops during the wide-reaching cyberattack-spurred service interruption. The usually busy section of public computers near the York Boulevard entrance of the downtown branch was cordoned while signs alerted patrons that some services were unavailable.
“The cyberhack is bad for everyone, honestly,” Bray said.
This was Day 6 of the hack that has hobbled municipal operations, knocking down phone lines, websites and email, and has affected everything from library services to transit operations and council meetings.
Public health vaccination records were confirmed to be affected on Friday, as the cyberattack was cited as the reason looming suspensions for students without their current vaccines were postponed indefinitely. The city did not provide any further answers Friday in response to questions from The Spectator. Officials say they’ve assembled a team of experts to respond to the cybersecurity breach but shared little information since discovering the emergency Sunday.
“I understand that people want more information, but the very nature of this kind of situation is one that allows us to only provide some information as we go along,” Mayor Andrea Horwath told reporters Wednesday.
With no Wi-Fi service at city hall, council cut its meeting short after ducking into close session for a confidential update on the unfolding cyber-emergency.
Committee meetings were cancelled for the week and by Friday afternoon, clerks had yet to announce when the postponed council business would be revisited.
The city won’t specify the nature of the cyberattack, including whether ransomware, which can involve in bad actors holding data hostage for pay, might be at play. Moreover, officials have declined to say how much or what kind of data the culprits might have accessed. And just how long the recovery effort might take is unclear.
“While we don’t have a concrete timeline, we are working hard to investigate and resolve the issues as quickly and securely as possible” the city said via email Thursday.
At the outset of the hack, the library’s website was down, but it’s now back online and is “partially operational” with some functions still unavailable.
Along with Wi-Fi and computers, printers and scanners weren’t available for public use, but inbranch borrowing and study halls were.
A list affected municipal programs and services is posted to the city’s website, Hamilton.ca.