NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana's Office of Motor Vehicles will remained closed Wednesday morning as the state continues to restore its networks after an attempted ransomware attack.
The offices have been closed since Monday due to a ransomware attack that was launched on state servers, likely as the result of a phishing email that was sent to various administrative state staff members.
"It initiated sort of right as we were walking in the door for the day," said Dustin Glover, the state's chief information security officer. "The goal of the attacker is to lock you out of your data so they can get some money."
The Office of Motor Vehicles had hoped to resume service at noon, but that was changed when Commissioner Karen St. Germain said the state's IT department was still working on her agency's computer system.
Glover said that despite the disruption, the state caught the problem early and began working it immediately. He said that out of 5,000 servers, 132 were confirmed to have been compromised and that 1,600 of 35,000 work stations were compromised.
The effort to clean up all of those stations takes time, according to Neal Underwood, the deputy chief information officer.
"We have to go across the state and touch each and every one of those work stations to take all of the infected software off and put clean software on. We are about 50 percent through the re-imaging effort at this time. It's taking a little longer than we originally anticipated."
The cyberattack was discovered Monday and disrupted business operations and online services across nearly every state agency. All 79 Office of Motor Vehicles across Louisiana, including the one in New Orleans, were unable to do business.
State websites and many online government services were back online Tuesday, according to Jacques Berry, the Director of Policy and Communications.
Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office says some services started returning Monday afternoon. But it could take days to restore all websites and online operations.
Edwards’ office says the Office of Technology Services identified a “cybersecurity threat” that affected some computer servers. The office took all its servers offline as a precaution.
The threat was discovered two days after Louisiana’s election for governor when the Secretary of State’s website was a vital link for information.
The governor said no data was lost in the attempted attack and the state did not pay a ransom. State police and federal agencies are investigating.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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