Computer virus shuts down Augusta City Hall

AUGUSTA (WGME) -- A cyber virus has shut down most of the city of Augusta's operations.

Augusta's City Center is mostly empty Thursday night, besides a city council meeting, after city officials say a bad cyber virus got into the city’s entire network.

City officials say that around 3 a.m., a computer virus attacked city servers.

"Our data is still secure, it wasn't breached,” Augusta Assistant City Manager Ralph St. Pierre said. “But our software servers that use that data was breached."

This means most clerical employees couldn't work Thursday, even the Augusta Civic Center posted about problems connecting to credit card machines and ATMs.

Police officials say they also felt the effects of the virus.

"It's thrown us back 15 years as far as doing a lot of reports by hand,” Augusta Police Chief Jared Mills said. “We're still able to type on computers to a certain extent, but entering the data directly onto the computer system has been an issue."

Police Chief Jared Mills says this didn’t stop them from responding to calls, and say the public is safe.

They say the FBI is now involved in the investigation.

"These type of attacks are tried every day, we're not the only city this has happened to," Mills said.

He says the real work will begin once the problem is isolated and fixed.

“Once we get all of our computers back up, we will have to then go back in and backfill information," Mills said.

A sign outside the city center says they will be closed Friday. City officials say they hope to be fully operational by the start of next week.