‘Cyber incident’ affecting Fort St. John confirmed to be ransomware

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — Staff members with the City of Fort St. John have confirmed the “cyber incident” impacting the city was a ransomware attack.

Communications manager Ryan Harvey confirmed the nature of the incident in an email on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 13th.

“While we can confirm that this incident was a ransomware attack, we didn’t provide any payment to the unauthorized third party,” Harvey said.

The incident began affecting the city on February 25th, bringing down phone and email services as well as much of the city’s internal network.

As of March 6th, 75 per cent of the city’s services had been restored. 

Harvey’s latest update claimed “virtually all front-facing services” have been restored, but some – including the My City Hall platform for paying bills online – will take longer, for security reasons.

The March 6th update also claimed a “small amount” of data had been taken by the unauthorized third party that perpetrated the ransomware attack.

According to Harvey, the stolen files represent less than one per cent of the city’s data, and mostly consist of working documents from various city departments.

“Our HR and financial systems were not included in this set of data,” his statement reads. “We continue working with our legal team and relevant authorities to review the impacted files for sensitive personal information.”

Harvey’s update stated the city does not believe any personal information was included in the stolen data. 

However, he added the city will follow protocol and notify anyone impacted if necessary.

Harvey concluded by stating no further information could be shared regarding the attack, due to an ongoing investigation into the incident. The city will notify residents when the My City Hall portal is back online.