A cyberattack last week against the New Orleans city government likely involved the ransomware known as Ryuk, based on affected files shared on the malware-analysis website VirusTotal. Colin Cowie, the founder of cybersecurity research firm Red Flare Security, was first to spot lines of code referencing both functions of New Orleans’ municipal agencies and the Ryuk virus.
City officials acknowledged the attack late Friday afternoon, when they declared a state of emergency and shut down more than 4,000 computers and servers across the government. New Orleans’ official websites remained offline through Monday morning, and several more services were still affected.
