City governments in Michigan, New York face shutdowns after ransomware attacks
Multiple U.S. city governments are dealing with ransomware attacks this week, disrupting services and forcing officials to close facilities in response.
On Wednesday, Michigan’s Traverse City and New York’s Newburgh both announced cyber incidents and warned residents that they cannot handle some payments for things like taxes, water and permits.
Traverse City — the most populous city in Northern Michigan with about 30,000 residents — said officials with Grand Traverse County discovered network irregularities on Wednesday morning and eventually made the decision to take all county and city networks offline.
Grand Traverse County manages the IT network for both the county and Traverse City. City manager Liz Vogel said their priority is safeguarding data and ensuring continuity of essential services.
The FBI and Michigan State Police are now involved in the recovery effort but county and city networks will be offline for the foreseeable future.
Emergency services like 911, police and fire are unaffected, but in-person payments for city services are unavailable. Residents are being urged to either delay in-person payments or use online portals to pay things like bills or taxes. Online payment systems were not affected by the attack because they are managed on third-party platforms.
“Our IT Department was swift in their actions to isolate this incident and shutdown the networks at the County and City,” said Nate Alger, Grand Traverse County Administrator. “We will continue to work with our partners to learn more about the impacts and provide the least amount of disruptions to the general public as possible.”
The city and county government websites are hosted on separate servers that were not affected, allowing them to stay online. Grand Traverse County has about 100,000 residents.
Newburgh City Hall closed
The city of Newburgh, New York, announced its own cyber incident this week that forced it to shut down City Hall through Thursday.
The cyberattack was discovered on Monday and Newburgh’s government is completely unable to process or accept payments for things like property taxes, water, sewer, sanitation, permit fees, or parking tickets.
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