OSHKOSH (NBC 26) — Just this week, we've seen two apparent cyber attacks in Northeast Wisconsin.
Monday, hackers appeared to gain control of the Green Bay Packers Twitter account. A day later, the city of Oshkosh became the latest city to be attacked by ransomware.
"We are not alone in this," city manager Mark Rohloff said. "We are a victim just like every other community, every other business. And it all starts with opening up an email that has something attached to it that pretty much opens the door to your data."
The attack froze the Oshkosh system Tuesday morning and took the city's website down. Rohloff does not believe databases with credit card information were hacked. There is some concern about city emails and passwords.
"It can completely take an entire network down," Fox Valley Technical College IT Instruction Department Chair Joe Wetzel said. "It can take servers offline, it can lock up all of the files."
Wetzel is teaching students in his program to think like hackers to protect people against them. He said there are ways people at home can stay safe as well. Wetzel recommends people back up data on the cloud, use a password manager, and use multi-factor authentication.
It's easier to prevent an attack than to recover from one.
"The process is for us to really burn it down to the ground and rebuild it," It's really difficult to try to remove specific viruses."
Oshkosh leaders aren't sure when they'll be back up and running. They are confident of lessons learned after this attack.
"You have to be careful opening your emails," Rohloff said. "It is so important that you watch that."
