City of Oak Ridge Computer System Infected By Malware Attack that shuts down entire System

The city of Oak Ridge IT department has experienced a Malware attack today that shut down the entire city’s computer system. The severity of the attack is not known at this time as they are still assessing the damage.

Lauren Gray, the city’s spokesperson did confirm that it was a malware attack but no word on how the city was infected. She said that they have “hired specialists that are experienced in cybersecurity and recovery services to help identify the impacts on our technology systems and to restore service as quickly as possible.”

As of right now, there is no evidence of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) being exposed or misappropriated.

When asked how the city employees were able to work today, and how they will work tomorrow she said, “City employees are working and doing what they can offline. We are working with our legacy systems off the network and providing services as necessary.”

911 services (PD & Fire) are operating as normal and utilities like water and electric are not impacted.

As far as utility payments go, late fees are being waived and disconnects are not occurring during this outage. If they need to start a new service or get their service back online (for people who have been disconnected and want to pay to be reconnected) they can come to the Utility Business Office (UBO) and our staff will work with them.”

We are continuing to follow this story and will update it when we receive more information.