Aerial photograph of Foster City, Calif., featuring the distinctive lagoon system surrounded by modern residential developments and office buildings.
halbergman/Getty ImagesFoster City government officials say they are still without working email or phones, six days after a cyberattack left city services largely paralyzed.
The attack remains under “investigation,” officials said in a news release issued on Monday.
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“While the investigation is underway, the City has moved its network offline,” officials said in the release. “As a result, Foster City is experiencing disruptions to its phone and email systems. At this time, City staff are unable to make or receive calls or respond to emails. If you contact us, staff will respond when services are available.”
City officials said last week that they are “uncertain” if sensitive personal data was compromised in the attack, and they urged individuals who have done business with the city to take steps to protect their data.
Police services and 911 calls are functioning. City Hall is open to residents, with “limited services.”
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On Monday, the City Council convened a special session and reportedly voted 4-0 to declare a state of emergency, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
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The declaration makes Foster City “potentially eligible to receive governmental aid for the emergency response,” according to a memo from City Manager Stefan Chatwin.
Austin Walsh, the city’s communications manager, told SFGATE that the state of emergency resolution would not change how the city is responding to the cyberattack.
Currently, there is no listed timeline for when services will fully resume. In an interview with SFGATE on Monday, Jake Tarrant, a manager of incident response at managed security and IT provider Logically, said it can take “three to six weeks for a sense of normalcy” to return after a cyberattack.
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Gillian Mohney is a breaking news editor at SFGATE. Previously, she worked at Healthline and ABC News, where she covered health, science and national news. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has lived in the Bay Area for nearly a decade.
