New Orleans: Mayor Declares State of Emergency after a Cyberattack

The city of New Orleans after being hit by a cyberattack, declared a state of emergency wherein the employees and officials were asked to shut down the computers, power down devices by unplugging and take down all servers as a cautionary measure. As a part of the incident, The Nola.gov website was also down.

Officials suspect the involvement of ransomware as the attacks demanding ransom has become increasingly common in the recent past and ransomware was detected as per Mayor LaToya Cantrell, however, there is no confirmatory lead on the matter as the city has not received any ransom demand from the attackers.

Earlier this year, in November, The State of Louisiana was hit by a ransomware attack which prompted officials to shut down government websites and deactivate other digital services and consequently, a state of emergency was being declared by the governor. As per the sources, it is the gravest cyber attack the state had witnessed till date, it took about two weeks for the authorities to restore all the systems and make them functional again. The attack was followed by aggressive measures being taken by the security officers who classified the attack being a “sophisticated and coordinated” one. As per the latest findings, it remains unclear whether the two attacks are linked to each other or not.

While drawing other correlations, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell referenced the attack back to one where several school systems in Louisiana were attacked by malware. The compromised school systems were from Sabine, Morehouse, and Ouachita, according to the reports by CNN.

“Out of an abundance of caution, all employees were immediately alerted to power down computers, unplug devices & disconnect from WiFi. All servers have been powered down as well,” stated a tweet from New Orleans’ Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness.

During a press conference in regard of the matter, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said, “We have a unified command, we’re here with not only our local partners but our state and federal partners as well, which includes our national guard, Louisiana state police, FBI, the state fusion center and secret service.”