Ransomware caused Baltimore emergency dispatch service outage: Mayor’s office

Baltimore’s chief information officer has blamed ransomware with sidelining the local emergency dispatch system over the weekend, in the wake of Atlanta suffering a similar breach last week.

Ransomware caused the recent computer outage that affected the city’s Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, said Frank Johnson, the chief information officer in Mayor Catherine Pugh’s Office of Information Technology.

A computer server that runs the CAD system used to assist 911 and 311 calls was compromised after a technician attempting to troubleshoot a separate issue changed a firewall setting that made it vulnerable to hackers, Mr. Johnsontold The Baltimore Sun.

“I don’t know what else to call it but a self-inflicted wound,” Mr. Johnson said, The Sun reported. “The bad guys did not get in on their own without the help of someone inadvertently leaving the door open.”

The infected server was subsequently taken offline, suspending the automatic dispatch system for roughly 17 hours starting Sunday morning, The Associated Press reported.

Dispatched manually deployed emergency personnel until the system was back up and running early Monday, AP reported.

The mayor’s office acknowledged the hack on Tuesday, but Mr. Johnson’s admission Wednesday afternoon of a “limited breach” caused by “ransomware perpetrators” marked the first time the city offered specifics.

“The systems and the software and the files are all being investigated by the FBI right now,” he told The Sun.

An FBI spokesman said federal investigators are providing assistance to Baltimore but declined to comment further, The Sun reported.

While ransomware typically encrypts the contents of vulnerable computers and then holds that data hostage until the the perpetrator receives a ransom usually in the form of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, Mr. Johnson said he unaware of any specific payment being sought by the perpetrators responsible for the Baltimore breach, The Sun reported.

Baltimore’s brush with ransomware comes on the heels of Atlanta enduring a similar assault last week caused complications for Georgia’s largest city and capital. Atlanta detected ransomware on its systems on March 22, sidelining city websites and services ranging from a magistrate court to a local water utility.

More recently, Boeing acknowledged suffering a security breach Wednesday that The Seattle Times described as ransomware-related.