[BreachExchange] Virus shuts down city services

[Destry Winant]

https://beatricedailysun.com/news/local/virus-shuts-down-city-services/article_e862abc7-28ee-5064-a040-09c45315ab67.html

A virus shut down many city operations this week, including phone and
internet services for several departments.

City Administrator Tobias Tempelmeyer said city departments lost phone
and internet service in the downtown area, including city hall, the
Beatrice Police Department and city auditorium, which houses Beatrice
Fire and Rescue.

City departments outside of downtown, such as the library and Board of
Public Works service center, were not impacted by the outage.

It’s believed that the outage was caused by a virus installed by an
outside hacker.

“We got hacked early Monday morning,” Tempelmeyer said. “We think
around 3:30 a.m., a virus was installed on the computers that came
from a remote desktop connection. We are working to undo the virus so
we can get things back up and get back to work.”

The virus did not impact 911 dispatch services, which use a different
network. In person bill paying at the BPW office was also operational.

Tempelmeyer said the outage primarily impacted police and rescue
workers by writing out reports by hand, rather than submitting them
online as is common practice.

“The hard part is if the police department pulls someone over for
speeding, they normally type back in a report,” he said. “Well you
can’t do that. You have to write it on pen and paper. They usually
email that report to the county attorney or city attorney, but they
can’t do that today. It’s just little bit of a backup on paperwork
getting done.”

Services were not restored as of Tuesday afternoon, though Tempelmeyer
was hopeful the virus would be removed soon.

“It’s always concerning,” he said. “You wouldn’t want this to happen
to any business, and certainly not one that provides the services we
provide. We’re going to sit back and learn from this and see where we
can strengthen up our security in the future.”