Suisun City Declares State of Emergency After Cyberattack – KQED

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See TV Programming Manager Emma Casley’s recommendations from this month’s KQED 9, PLUS and Passport schedules.
Watch recordings of recent KQED Live events.
Support KQED by using your donor-advised fund to make a charitable gift.
Suisun City has shut down its computer network and declared a state of emergency after a cybersecurity attack impacted services like police and fire dispatch in the community.
The city said “malicious software” infected information technology systems around 5:45 a.m. on Friday. 
The attack “hit critical public safety operations, including 911 routing, police and fire dispatch, records and City services,” according to a statement on the city’s website. Suisun City Police dispatchers began taking calls through the Solano County dispatch center and officials activated its emergency operations center.
“From a public safety standpoint, there’s no threat to the public at this time,” said Michael Elm with the Suisun City Public Information Office. “For a resident experiencing daily life in Suisun City, there really isn’t anything going to be any impact to them other than maybe not being able to pay their water bill or process permits at the moment.” 
The city said it shut down its entire IT network to save evidence for a federal investigation. Suisun City’s IT system is set up to automatically shut down when it detects an intruder, according to Elm. 
Elm said that there was no interruption to emergency services or to dispatchers being able to answer 911 calls; however, some software became unusable because of the network shutdown.
On Saturday morning, City Council members held a special meeting to declare a state of emergency, which the city said allows it to “quickly access emergency support services and to recoup costs.” 
Elm said “a lot of the investigation” will be starting tomorrow when private and government cybersecurity experts come to the city. The entire system will remain shut down while the city clears each function to bring operations back online. 
They’re only the latest local government in the region to be hit by a cyberattack, and cybersecurity experts who spoke with KQED say these attacks are common.
Earlier this year, Foster City and Pittsburg experienced other cyberattacks that impacted services in their own jurisdictions. Foster City declared a state of emergency after a March ransomware incident that shut down many services for more than a week. Pittsburg lost almost $1 million to a February phishing scam, though over half of it was recovered.
Chris Hoofnagle, faculty director at the UC Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, said that cyberattacks against cities are often on general services. He pointed to Oakland’s ransomware attack in 2023, which, among other things, disabled the city’s ability to charge for parking.
“If you can prevent a city from collecting taxes — business taxes, local taxes and so on — it’s quite coercive that cities might end up paying a ransom to unlock their systems,” Hoofnagle said.
David Wagner, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, said that the goal of cyberattacks is typically to get the city to pay a ransom.
“Cybersecurity attacks on small cities are common,” Wagner said. “Criminals see them as easy prey.”
Suisun City is working with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the California Office of Emergency Services to restore systems.
The city does not have an estimate for when its services may come back online.
KQED’s Christopher Alam contributed to this report. 

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