The city of Attleboro, Massachusetts, is investigating a cybersecurity incident reported Thursday that took municipal phone lines and internal email offline, forcing staff to use paper workarounds while police and fire continue emergency response.
City officials said the “cybersecurity incident” has taken several municipal information technology systems offline and triggered network issues across departments.
According to a news release from the mayor’s office, city leaders are working with cybersecurity specialists, the city’s insurer and state and federal partners to identify the cause of the disruption and begin restoring services.
The city said only 911 and the non-emergency business lines for the police and fire departments are currently operating. All other phone lines to city offices and the police department are out of service, and internal email is down citywide for all employees and departments.
Attleboro City Hall remains open during normal business hours, with staff handling paper forms and accepting offline bill and tax payments. Officials said some departments may be unable to complete certain tasks until systems are restored and urged residents to expect delays while employees work through temporary or paper-based procedures.
The city said public safety services are fully operational. All public safety phone lines and radio systems are functioning, dispatchers have made manual adjustments, and police and fire continue to respond to emergency calls without interruption. Neighboring police and fire departments can still reach Attleboro dispatch through normal mutual aid channels.
Officials said the public school district is not affected by the outage and continues normal operations.
The city said it is working with outside cybersecurity specialists, its insurer and state and federal partners to investigate the incident and begin restoring services. Officials have not said what type of cyber incident occurred or whether any city, employee or resident data was accessed, stolen or encrypted, referring to the situation only as a “cybersecurity incident” and “network issues” while the investigation continues.
Attleboro said it will post further updates once new information is available.
Attleboro is part of a broader wave of cyber pressure on Massachusetts institutions in 2024 and 2025. In 2021, Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro reported a ransomware incident that exposed patient medical and financial data, and this year Attleboro-based Sensata Technologies disclosed a ransomware attack that disrupted its global manufacturing operations. Across the state, a cyberattack on the South Shore Regional Emergency Communications Center in Hingham disrupted 911 dispatching, hospitals in the Heywood and Athol system shut down key systems during a cybersecurity incident, and Natick software company MathWorks confirmed ransomware behind a prolonged outage. School districts in Fall River and Provincetown, along with the Town of Bourne, have also reported cyberattacks or network breaches that forced systems offline and disrupted classes or municipal services.
Attleboro is a city of roughly 46,000 residents in Bristol County in southeastern Massachusetts, just northeast of Providence, Rhode Island.
City leaders have not provided a timeline for restoring phones and email. Residents are being told to continue calling 911 for emergencies and to expect slower service for routine municipal business while the city works to bring affected systems back online.
