Security News > 2021 > May > Tulsa Computer System Hacks Stopped by Security Shutdown
Most residents of Tulsa are being prevented from paying their water bills after the city shut down its computer network as a security measure following an attempted ransomware attack, a city official said Friday.
The attempted breach was stopped before any personal data was accessed, city spokesman Carson Colvin said.
The primary effect of the shutdown - which could last from several more days to about a month - is payment for city water services, either online or in person, because the city cannot process credit or debit cards with computers inoperable.
The city said Thursday that police and fire responses continue, but issues such as uploading police body cameras are slowed because of the computer shutdown.
Mayor G.T. Bynum on Thursday said the hackers told the city to pay a ransom or else it would publicize that it had broken into the network, but Bynum said Tulsa didn't pay and instead announced the breach on its own.
Tulsa is the 33rd local government in the U.S. to be hit with a ransomware attack this year, according to a tally kept by ransomware expert Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the security firm Emsisoft.