City of New Britain hit with a ransomware attack

The City of New Britain in central Connecticut, US, experienced system disruption due to a ransomware attack for over 48 hours.

According to local officials cited by WFSB, what first seemed like a suspected cyberattack was later identified as a ransomware attack that started early Wednesday morning.

The New Britain Police Department initially learned of a disruption affecting some city systems, including internet and phone services. Upon identifying the issue, the city activated its "incident response protocols" and worked "closely with state and federal authorities to assess the scope and impact of the incident."

According to Mayor Bobby Sanchez, the city is working to determine the exact scale of the attack.

“We are working to determine which portion of the city’s network infrastructure were impacted. The process takes time,” Sanchez said.

Residents were assured that emergency services, including police and fire dispatch and communications, were still functioning despite the network disruption. Essential services would also continue.

“Public safety services remain operational, and the city continues to deliver essential services,” Sanchez said. “There has been no interruption to emergency response, and every possible step is being taken to limit any impact on residents, businesses, and city operations.”

The city has engaged extra technical resources and cybersecurity experts to assess the impact and restore its systems as quickly as possible. The FBI, as well as state and federal authorities, are involved in investigating the attack.

Officials said that it’s too soon to know whether personal information stored on the city’s servers had been compromised.

According to WFSB, the city is expecting to restore operations over the weekend.

Cities and essential systems are often targeted by cybercriminals because they are more susceptible to disruption and face greater pressure to restore operations quickly, which attackers hope will push governments to pay a ransom.

“Government has kind of a no-fail mission in that they have to always keep running. You can’t say, ‘Oh, we’re going to shut down the police department or the fire department today—certainly not going to shut down public works this week,’” Weber said.