Operations at the Seattle Public Library over the Memorial Day weekend have been interrupted by a ransomware attack, which led to the shutdown of its wireless network, online catalog, and computers, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
No specific timeline as to when all impacted systems will be restored was provided. However, manual book and CD lending was noted by Seattle Public Library to continue across its 27 branches amid an ongoing investigation into the incident.
Such an attack against Seattle Public Library comes amid increasingly prevalent ransomware events against libraries across the U.S. and around the world — with Canada's Toronto Library and the British Library, the national library of the UK, reporting separate ransomware attacks last fall — prompting the U.S. to propose a new program gathering libraries' cybersecurity initiatives and advanced firewall services in an effort to better equip such facilities against cybersecurity threats.
