Malden hit with cyberattack on digital information systems last week

City responds to targeted attack with investigation with combined resources of Malden IT personnel, MPD, State Police, FBI and U.S. Secret Service; primary focus is to determine potential existence, extent of any municipal data breach

  The City of Malden is using a “full court press” of local, state and federal resources to conduct a deep investigation of a serious cyberattack last week on municipal digital information systems. The key focus of the response team and joint resources is to assess the full impact of the cyberattack and consequently determine if there had been a data breach of municipal information as a result of the January 25 cyberattack. Mayor Gary Christenson, along with his team of city officials working on the response to the incident, earlier this week issued a detailed update on the city’s response to what city officials called a “focused cyber attack” on city systems on Wednesday, January 25.

  The cyberattack shut down nearly all of the city’s informational technology (IT) systems for a period of time on January 25, including internet access and municipal telephones, in addition to other IT programs city employees use to perform necessary tasks on a daily basis. While the city of Malden’s telephone system and email communication availability were restored at the end of last week into the beginning of this week, as of Tuesday, January 31, municipal employees still had limited access to some city IT internal systems as the investigation continues, according to city officials.

  In the official statement issued this week, city officials related that Mayor Christenson and others moved quickly to assemble “an incident response team comprised of City of Malden police assets assigned to the FBI and their counterparts in the State Police and Secret Service cyber-crime units.” According to the city’s statement, “The incident response team assembled at City Hall within hours of the attack and worked with IT to collect digital forensic data and assess scope of any potential data breach.”

  City officials confirmed that the investigation and assessment continued into this week as the full and complete extent of the cyberattack was being determined and understood.

  Following is the complete text of the official municipal statement on January 31 (“Update on System Outages at City Hall”) regarding the cyberattack. It is also available and accessible online at www.cityofmalden.org.

  “We wanted to provide the Malden community with a brief update on the situation we’ve been working through since last week. On Wednesday, January 25th, the City of Malden was the target of a focused cyber-attack. Unfortunately, it is the reality of the digital world we live in today, and disruptive at best when you are the target of such attacks.

  “Our Information Technology Department (IT) in concert with its security teams was able to respond, suspend and isolate systems in the very early stage of the attack. Mayor Christenson, in conjunction with our IT Director Anthony Rodrigues and Police Chief Glenn Cronin, assembled an incident response team comprised of City of Malden police assets assigned to the FBI and their counterparts in the State Police and Secret Service cyber-crime units. The incident response team assembled at City Hall within hours of the attack and worked with IT to collect digital forensic data and assess scope of any potential data breach.

  “As we work to assess the impact, we have employed the most conservative approach in bringing systems and networks back online. Currently, while our phones and email systems remain active, employees who make use of certain internal systems are still limited in their access. We continue to review and scan systems for reactivation on a one-by-one basis. Simultaneously, we are working to quantify the impact of the attack and assess if there was any breach of data. More information will be forthcoming as we expand to normal operations.
“We appreciate your patience as we work through the necessary steps to bring our full network back to its normal, steady state.”