Jim Little | Pensacola News Journal

Nate Chute, USA Today Network

An ongoing cyberattack has crippled the city of Pensacola's computer communication systems, and officials are working to determine whether personal data has been compromised.

"The city of Pensacola is experiencing a cyberattack that began this weekend that is impacting our city network, including phones and email at City Hall and some of our other buildings," Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson said at his weekly press conference on Monday morning.

The cyberattack began just after 1:45 a.m. Saturday and has continued since then, city officials said Monday. Robinson said officials did not know if the attack was connected in any way to the deadly shooting at NAS Pensacola on Friday morning.

The FBI's Jacksonville Field Office, the lead agency investigating the base shooting, acknowledged in a tweet that the city had notified federal authorities about a "cyber incident." The FBI said in a separate tweet Monday evening that it had not identified a connection between the cyberattack and the shooting, but its preliminary investigation was continuing.

Pensacola spokeswoman Kaycee Lagarde said the city was working with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the cyberattack.

What is affected and what isn't?

Robinson said the city's online pay systems have been affected by the cyberattack, and authorities are still evaluating if any personal information has been exposed.

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"We're still trying to figure out what's happened, what's there and what there may be potential for," he said.

Robinson said almost all computer communication systems at City Hall are down, including phones and emails. Online payment systems at Pensacola Energy and for city sanitation are also not working.

Lagarde said most of the systems that are currently offline were taken down by city IT as a preventive measure and will be brought back online once the issues are resolved.

"IT is working diligently on it as quickly as they can to get it restored, but we don't have an estimate at this point," Lagarde said.

The Pensacola International Airport, 911 service and police and fire departments have not been affected.

"We severed things immediately as soon as we found out we were having this problem," Robinson said. "So (public safety services) were severed immediately. ... They're up and running and no problems at this particular time."

Wochit

Cyberattacks have become increasingly complex

Eman El-Sheikh, director of the University of West Florida Center for Cybersecurity, said the center reached out to the city to offer any assistance.

"We've seen increase in the complexity and number of cyberattacks across, not just cities and municipalities, but organizations in general, and attackers will often take advantage of ways to infiltrate the system," El-Sheikh said.

The most common type of attacks including phishing and ransomware attacks. In phishing attacks, members of the organization will receive what appear to be legitimate links that when clicked, give an attacker access to the system. Ransomware attacks involve the attack encrypting valuable data, preventing access until a ransom is paid.

El-Sheikh said at least seven municipalities have been attacked with ransomware or phishing attacks in the last year, including larger cities like Baltimore and Atlanta.

Robinson said Monday he couldn't comment on if Pensacola had received a ransom demand.

"We're not the only city that's experienced this," he said. "It's unfortunate. It's going to make it inconvenient for a lot of our users for the next week, interacting with the city, but we ask that you just give us some time and we'll continue to keep working on it and get this thing back up and running."

Two Florida cities paid out large ransoms earlier this year in response to cyberattacks. Lake City paid out $426,000 worth of bitcoin, and Riviera Beach paid out $600,000 to hackers.

El-Sheikh said the best way to prevent a cyberattack is to train everyone in any organization.

"All it takes is one inadvertent click on a phishing email, and that gives the cyber criminals access to the systems," El-Sheikh said.