The City of New Orleans ordered all employees to log off the the Wi-Fi, power down their computers and unplug devices on Friday, after the city came across what they gad called "suspicious activity on its networks," they said in a Tweet. Over the weekend, the city's web site, NOLA.gov was still down, claiming unplanned maintenance as the issue.
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New Orleans is considering the possibility of a cyberattack hitting the city. But they've been stressing that data has not been lost currently, and that the city is working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. National Guard and Louisiana State Police. The city did declare a state of emergency, but crucially emergency services remain up and working including 911, NOFD, which is the city's fire department, as well as EMS, the police department and the Emergency Operations Center.
Certainly the NOLA City Council is not that concerned, city councilperson's pleas on Saturday to vote on Twitter for her for Mrs. Claus Councilwoman of the year.
At this point, there is no indication of significant data loss due to this cybersecurity incident. The https://twitter.com/CityOfNOLA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CityOfNOLA responded quickly once suspicious activity was detected.Hackers can attack entire governments and cities. Just ask the Village of Key Biscayne which was hacked among a slew of cities in Florida over a few weeks where they were asked to pay a ransom to get access to their online systems again.
— NOLA Ready (@nolaready) https://twitter.com/nolaready/status/1205992171121...">December 14, 2019
As of Sunday night, the City of New Orleans had not yet announced what the next steps would be, nor had it re-opened access to the city's web site.
