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Oʻahu Transit Services network slowly coming back online after cyberattack

Sophia McCullough
/
Hawaii Public Radio

The Oʻahu Transit Services network is slowly coming back online after a cyberattack forced it to shut down its mobile system a week ago.

Honolulu’s Transportation Services Director Roger Morton says full services, such as the DaBus tracking app and the HandiVan’s mobile data terminal, should be back up in a matter of days.

Morton says OTS has purposefully not reconnected its system to the internet in order to protect the city’s servers from the attack.

"There's been no evidence that there's been any intrusion to the city systems. Are the city systems vulnerable? Of course they are," Morton told Hawaiʻi Public Radio.

"I could say that the city systems are well protected, but that the threat is real. And for example, the suspect instance of this is probably an email that was opened with an attachment that was the root of an infection," he said. "So I know our employees at the city, particularly after this event, have increasingly been told to use good computer hygiene in the way they open up emails, the way they transfer files, the way they access the networks remotely. All of those are vulnerabilities."

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are still investigating the attack.

"I think that this is a wake-up call for us at the city and at OTS," he said. "I think it's also a wake-up call for all businesses in America, that we are being targeted in an increasingly volatile way by entities around the world."

This interview aired on The Conversation on Dec. 16, 2021. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.

Savannah Harriman-Pote is the energy and climate change reporter. She is also the lead producer of HPR's "This Is Our Hawaiʻi" podcast. Contact her at sharrimanpote@hawaiipublicradio.org.
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