Cyberattack Cripples California City’s 911 System, Forces Emergency Shutdown

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A Northern California city of roughly 30,000 residents was forced to shut down its entire computer network Friday after a cyberattack knocked out its 911 system, the latest sign of how vulnerable American municipalities remain to digital assaults.

Suisun City, located about 45 miles from San Francisco, declared a state of emergency Saturday after malicious software infiltrated its network shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, the California Post reported. “Officials shut down the entire network to stop the threat from spreading and protect evidence for a federal investigation,” the outlet reported.

City officials scrambled to prevent the outage from endangering residents, rerouting 911 calls through the Solano County dispatch center. Police and fire personnel remained active and able to respond to calls for service despite the loss of the city’s own systems.

The breach reached well beyond emergency dispatch. City services including building permits and other municipal records were rendered inaccessible, and residents were unable to pay bills online while the network remained offline.

The Suisun City Council voted unanimously to pull the plug on the network and declare a state of emergency during a special meeting Saturday morning, an extraordinary step that underscores the severity of the threat local officials believed they were facing.

The incident lands amid heightened concern over foreign cyber threats to American infrastructure since the outbreak of the Iran war. U.S. authorities issued an “urgent warning” in April that hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were actively working to disrupt critical American computer networks, a threat national security officials have long cautioned could extend to local governments with limited cybersecurity resources.

It remains unclear whether the Suisun City attack is connected to Iran-backed hacking operations. Investigators are still working to determine how the malicious software breached the network and who is responsible, according to news reports.

City officials have not said when full network functionality is expected to be restored.