Toronto Public Library services down following weekend cyberattack

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) is informing that galore of its online services are offline aft suffering a cyberattack over nan weekend, connected Saturday, October 28.

TPL is Canada's largest nationalist room system, giving group entree to 12 cardinal books done 100 branch libraries crossed Toronto. It has 1,200,000 registered members and operates connected a fund that surpasses $200M.

In an announcement published connected a website created by nan Toronto Public Library while their main tract is offline, nan room says that nan pursuing services are presently unavailable:

• The "Your Account" feature
• 'tpl:map' passes
• Digital collections
• Public computers
• Printing services astatine room branches

However, nan announcement clarifies that room branches stay unfastened and run according to nan published schedule, truthful group whitethorn proceed to get and return books arsenic usual. WiFi entree connected nan branches remains available, and telephone lines are operational.

Also, online services hosted elsewhere, beyond tpl.ca, for illustration Kanopy, Digital Archive, Digital Archive Ontario, TPL Kids, and 'Ready for Reading,' stay available.

TPL's announcement does not supply immoderate specifications connected nan type of cybersecurity incident that they suffered but mentions that there's presently nary grounds that unit aliases customers person had their information exposed arsenic a result.

The statement underlines its speedy response, nan consequence of robust, proactive information measures, and requests patience, arsenic complete strategy restoration mightiness return a while.

"TPL has proactively prepared for cybersecurity issues and promptly initiated measures to mitigate imaginable impacts," reads nan announcement.

"We do expect though that it whitethorn return respective days earlier each systems are afloat restored to normal operations."

By nan clip of writing, nary ransomware actors had taken work for nan onslaught connected TPL's systems.

Canada nether fire

Canadian firms and organizations person been nan target of rather a fewer cyberattacks precocious that person impacted work readiness and raised concerns astir imaginable information breaches.

Last week, an IT outage impacted 5 hospitals in Ontario, which led to rescheduling appointments for later dates and redirecting non-emergency cases to replacement institutions.

Earlier this month, nan BianLian ransomware pack took work for nan September onslaught connected Air Canada, threatening to leak 210GB of delicate information connected their extortion portal.

In June 2023, Petro-Canada state position locations nationwide were impacted by a cyberattack that prevented customers from paying pinch in installments cards and deactivated nan rewards system.