Aspen Policy Academy

This article originally appeared on Cybernews on August 4, 2025.

By Ginataras Radauskas

The Saint Paul City Council has unanimously agreed to maintain a local state of emergency for an additional 90 days. That means that the cyberattack that shook the Minnesota city last week is still ongoing.

The move, aiming to safeguard the city against the digital threats it recently encountered, empowers Mayor Melvin Carter and local agencies to continue leveraging state and federal resources as they combat the cyberattack.

And they’re certainly needed. Already on July 28th, St. Paul’s IT systems were shut down to isolate local infrastructure from potential damage after “suspicious activity” was detected. Carter soon said this was an ongoing “deliberate, coordinated digital attack.”

Crippling hacks that knock out city services are … a hallmark of ransomware incidents, in which cybercriminals deploy data-scrambling software to paralyze victim networks until a ransom payment is made.

“This is definitely a serious attack. The fact that the Minnesota National Guard was called in signals that. Cities are attacked regularly, but this one is particularly broad in scope. It’s not unprecedented, but it is significant,” Betsy Cooper, Director of Aspen Policy Academy, told Cybernews.