Vanuatu officials turn to phone books and typewriters, one month after cyber Attack

It's News Time Folks

One month after a cyber-attack brought down government servers and websites in Vanuatu, frustrated officials were still using private Gmail accounts, personal laptops, pen and paper, and typewriters to run the government of the prime minister, Ishmael Kalsakau, who came into office just a few days after the crash.

The malware attack on state networks has caused delays in communication and coordination in the Pacific island nation of 314,000 people and 80 islands.

People resorted to the online Yellow Pages or the hard copy phone directory to locate government phone numbers. Some offices were running from their Facebook pages and Twitter.

The problems began about a month ago, when suspicious phishing activity was first noticed in emails to the Ministry of Finance, according to a financial analyst who works closely with the ministry’s cybersecurity teams.

The malware crashed nearly all government email and website archives. Many departments were still using local computer drives to store data, as opposed to web servers or the cloud. No official information has been released on whether ransom demands were made by the hackers.

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