WEST HAVEN — During Christmas dinner last month, Mayor Dorinda Borer got word that something was amiss.
“I got a call that there was a detection alert and a breach was happening, ” she said. “The IT director was alerted to it and we chose to take the systems down.”
Borer provided an update on the “unsettling” breach this week, following up on the announcement from the town on social media over the weekend. In that announcement city officials said they were looking into a “security incident” that caused a virtual system shutdown.
It also said they reached out to the authorities and “immediately engaged experienced external professionals” to help the city with the investigation as soon as they learned of the breach.
“When someone breaches your IT system it’s a crime, it’s a federal crime, and you have to take the lead from the people who do this all day long,” Borer said.
She said she was limited in what she could reveal due to the nature of an ongoing criminal investigation.
As of Monday, Borer said the forensic team city officials brought in to City Hall was still continuing its work.
“There will be more reports as I get more reports,” she said.
This breach comes several years after West Haven City Hall fell victim to a ransomware attack in 2018. In that incident officials paid $2,000 in Bitcoin to unlock 23 servers.
Since then, the city has invested in backup system software that enabled the city to restore its servers within four days in this incident, Borer said. That system was funded in the fiscal year 2022 budget, she said, as a response to the 2018 ransomware attack.
She noted that a small upside of city officials working to restore its phone and computer systems during the holiday season was that it was during the slowest time for business of the year.
Borer did not specify in her update whether any data was impacted or if anything was targeted.