The chief said police are assisting with an effort to thwart the attack since it was discovered March 14 and he was "on the phone all weekend" monitoring the efforts. Merner said the virus has been causing City Hall computers to malfunction in a number of different ways and he's been informed it appears to be a virus launched to collect information. He said no systems have crashed and employees have all changed passwords, but acknowledged "there are (still) bugs in the system."
"My people have been working to search it out and destroy it for days now," Merner said. "It clearly has been a problem for us. It's caused a lot of angst for the city."
The police chief said the goal of his IT professionals is to first stop the virus from attacking. When that's accomplished, he said, a criminal investigation may follow.
Alan Brady, the city's director of information technology, told the Portsmouth Herald Wednesday that 40 to 50 city computers are impacted by the "browser-based" virus, which is targeting user and password information. He described the virus as a "pretty good one," adding it has not caused city staff to lose files or anyone's personal information to be compromised.
Brady said he believes the virus breached the city computer system when someone in City Hall opened an attachment in an email or on a website that was linked to the virus. He said information that residents provide for payments to the city is stored on outside servers.
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