Cleveland City Hall reopens to residents after ransomware attack

For the first time in nearly two weeks, Cleveland City Hall offered services that were shut down after a ransomware attack.

Residents were once again able to buy copies of birth and death certificates from Vital Statistics, pay taxes, and obtain building permits.

Dr. David Margolius, Director of Public Health, said the city shut down after learning its systems were compromised to help protect residents, employees, and the city.

"After the cyberattack, we basically turned off the internet," he said. "We've been turning it on one website at a time to really keep it as safe as possible."

The cyberattack was discovered the weekend of June 8.

City officials disclosed it was a ransomware attack last Friday.

RELATED: City Hall 'cyber incident' identified as ransomware attack

"It's been really hard," he said. " When we turned the network off after the
cyberattack last weekend, we've had to really scramble to recreate workflows offline."

He praised city employees for their efforts to restore services for residents.

"It's taken a tremendous amount of work from a lot of great people to get us back to where we are today ready to serve customers in person," he said.

'No intent of paying the ransom'

The City of Cleveland has said it won't pay the ransom demanded by the ransomware attackers who infiltrated the city's systems.

In an e-mail to News 5 Cleveland earlier this week, Chief Communications Officer Sarah Johnson wrote, "At this time, we have no intent of paying the ransom and are working to restore our systems. "

RELATED: 'We have no intent of paying the ransom'

City officials have not revealed the identity of the ransomware attackers or the amount of ransom demanded.

It is also unclear how the attack happened and which data was targeted by cybercriminals.

City Hall will resume normal business hours tomorrow, Friday, June 21, according to a city news release.

The release also said the work to "fully operationalize" the city's systems is ongoing, and there may be longer wait times for services.