City of Woodstock and Woodstock Police Service of Ontario, Canada are reported to be reigning under a cyber attack which has disabled the entire communication and data related IT infrastructure of the federal agency.
David Creery, the top admin of Woodstock said that the computer network of the city and the police agency was down since Saturday 4 am and a ransomware virus is said to have caused the cyber incident.
Email access and data networks were severely affected by the malware attack and currently, the staff is trying to bring back the systems online as soon as possible.
As of now, no formal ransom demand has been put forward before the city mayor by hackers.
Woodstock Police Service released a press statement yesterday stating that its database was encrypted by malware from early hours of Monday.
Inspector Marci Shelton is yet to confirm the real reason behind the disruption. But the spokesperson has confirmed that it was caused due to a cyber attack.
No financial or personal info was compromised as per the preliminary inquiry made by the hackers.
Note- Ransomware is a kind of malware which locks down the database from access by encrypting the data until a ransom is paid to hackers in exchange for a decryption key.
Both the incidents have been reported to the state law enforcement agency and a special team from the cybersecurity cell has been pressed into service to investigate the cyber incident.
