Oakland Acknowledges Ransomware Attack Has Worsened With Massive New Release Of Personal Info

CBS San Francisco

April 6, 2023

OAKLAND -- A ransomware attack plaguing City of Oakland computer systems has worsened with a new trove of personal data of employees and residents released onto the so-called dark web, city officials acknowledged.

The ransomware attack began in February and resulted in network outages to the city's systems, prompting the city administrator to declare a state of emergency to fast-track the restoration process. Ransomware attacks involve hackers encrypting files and demanding ransom to decrypt them. The release of data indicates no ransom has been paid and hackers are following through on their threats.

On Tuesday, city officials confirmed the same hacker group which released sensitive personal information in February was also responsible for a data dump of some 600 gigabytes of information, about 60 times larger than the previous data release. The data is accessible by anyone with custom software created for darknet websites.

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