The city of Modesto revealed new details regarding a ransomware attack that targeted victims through the city’s digital network. On Thursday, the city said that it has been responding to a ransomware attack since last month and that a “limited amount” of the personal information of some people was compromised.That information included social security numbers, state-issued identification numbers, phone numbers, and driver’s license information. The city said it would begin notifying by mail next week those who may have been impacted by the attack and will provide them with free credit monitoring services.City Spokesperson Andrew Gonzales said the attack was limited to the police department and that no other residents, agencies or members of the public were threatened.When asked, Gonzales said he could not state how many people may have been impacted.There was never a threat to public safety systems for 911 calls or emergency services, though police had to “pull the plug” on parts of their network and go back to “old school policing,” Gonzales said.The police department has since returned to its usual technologies, he added. The city said its training preparedness exercises before the attack happened and its incident response plan helped to “contain the threat more quickly.”“Our information technology department began disconnecting portions of our digital network,” Gonzales said. “We then launched an investigation with leading cybersecurity experts, forensics teams, law enforcement to determine what we were dealing with.”Officials apologized to those who were affected and said it “has been and will continue to enhance security measures and protocols to help prevent an incident like this from happening again in the future.”Christos Kalantzis is the chief technology expert at a company called Security Scorecard. This company evaluates cybersecurity for over 12 million entities daily.Kalantzis said that he and his team were notified of the ransomware attack in Modesto. “It seems Modesto has suffered a ransomware attack as the result of a phishing or spear phishing exercise where they were able to infiltrate certain systems, lock them out and hold the…

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