Toronto Public Library services down following weekend cyberattack

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) is warning that many of its online services are offline after suffering a cyberattack over the weekend, on Saturday, October 28.

TPL is Canada's largest public library system, giving people access to 12 million books through 100 branch libraries across Toronto. It has 1,200,000 registered members and operates on a budget that surpasses $200M.

In an announcement published on a website created by the Toronto Public Library while their main site is offline, the library says that the following services are currently unavailable:

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

However, the announcement clarifies that library branches remain open and operate according to the published schedule, so people may continue to borrow and return books as usual. WiFi access on the branches remains available, and telephone lines are operational.

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

TPL's announcement does not provide any details on the type of cybersecurity incident that they suffered but mentions that there's currently no evidence that staff or customers have had their data exposed as a result.

The organization underlines its quick response, the result of robust, proactive security measures, and requests patience, as complete system restoration might take a while.

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

"We do anticipate though that it may take several days before all systems are fully restored to normal operations."

By the time of writing, no ransomware actors had taken responsibility for the attack on TPL's systems.

Canada under fire

Canadian firms and organizations have been the target of quite a few cyberattacks recently that have impacted service availability and raised concerns about potential data breaches.

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

Earlier this month, the BianLian ransomware gang took responsibility for the September attack on Air Canada, threatening to leak 210GB of sensitive data on their extortion portal.

In June 2023, Petro-Canada gas station locations nationwide were impacted by a cyberattack that prevented customers from paying with credit cards and deactivated the rewards system.