Seal Beach appears to have been the subject of a cyberattack.
City officials have confirmed “unusual activity” online but provided no details.
DeXpose.com, a platform that monitors the so-called darkweb, reported on March 2 that Seal Beach had been threatened with a cyberattack. DeXpose.com described the attack as a threatened ransomware attack.
The Sun contacted City Manager Patrick Gallegos and the Seal Beach Police Department for comment.
Gallegos said the SBPD would provide a statement.
District Two Councilman Ben Wong this morning said on the record that the city was working on it.
“The City detected unusual activity within its network,” wrote SBPD Lt. Julia Clasby in a March 3 email.
“Upon discovery, we promptly took steps to secure the environment and began an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the issue,” Clasby wrote.
“As our investigation into this matter is ongoing, we are unable to provide further details at this time,” Clasby wrote.
“We are monitoring our systems and working to investigate this matter fully,” Clasby wrote.
This was not the first time Seal Beach had to deal with an online attack. On December 2019, Seal Beach was the victim of a ransomware attack—which is best defined as a program that takes a computer or computer system hostage until money is paid by the individual, business, or government agency that has been attacked. (See “City of Seal Beach victim of ransomware attack,” at sunnews.org.)
“Attackers require the victim to pay a ransom, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, in order to unlock the files and data on the victims’ computer systems,” said the unsigned city of Seal Beach press release of December 2019.
More information about the incident was released in June 2022. The Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center Cyber Unit and the Seal Beach Police Department IT team reportedly found a “vulnerability” in the software used by Seal Beach’s IT vendor that crippled 171 computer systems including the Lifeguard and police networks. (For details see “Seal Beach honors public safety officers” at sunnews.org and scroll down to “Ransomeware” attack.)
