Police investigating after Châteauguay cyberattack paralyzes municipal computers

The town of Châteauguay, located on Montreal's South Shore, has been the target of a cyberattack that has affected the municipality's servers and the workstations of the "vast majority of employees." 

On Monday, the city said it had notified police and an investigation is underway. Officials said they have no indication that personal data of citizens or employees has been accessed or compromised.

Châteauguay Mayor Pierre-Paul Routhier told CBC Montreal's Daybreak that the security breach could have been caused by something as simple as a spam email. 

"The whole malware goes to the system right away," he said.

Routhier said the attack is intended to hold the files hostage in exchange for a ransom, but they don't yet know what the demand is.

"The computer system was attacked by ransomware called RYUK and since then, all of the data we have is encrypted now, so we don't have access to any of the data or any of the programs." 

He said that the attack has not affected the town's police or fire service.

Routhier said because municipal workers are unable to access their files, "the city is not working at full capacity."

Châteauguay has hired cyber security experts to help investigate the matter and get operations back to normal as soon as possible.

Until then, the city says citizen services have not been affected. 

The assessment roll is temporarily unavailable and temporary email accounts for various management departments have been activated, the city says.