Monday was the third day of the outage at Oahu Transit Services (OTS) in Hawaii. Cybersecurity experts are of the opinion that OTS is a victim of DragonForce, a ransomware ring that operates out of Malaysia. The organization that runs TheBus and TheHandi-Van is working with the FBI and Honolulu police to investigate the matter. Former Honolulu Police Department Deputy Chief John McCarthy said the outage certainly sounds like a ransomware attack — “so someone else is taking control of their system, at least in part, if not in full and controlling data and keeping it down, asking for some sort of ransom.”

“The information is unavailable, it’s apparently been locked down. You see it happen over an extended period of time because the company that owns that site is trying to buy time to think whether to pay the ransom, work out some sort of deal,” he added. Read more about this story on our LinkedIn page