“The magnitude and complexity of the cybersecurity incident exceeded the city’s response capacity.”
A ransomware group called Interlock hit St. Paul’s critical infrastructure through compromised backup server accounts and the city had to call in the Minnesota National Guard’s cyber protection team. That unit had never been deployed within the state in its eight years of existence. The city refused to pay the ransom, so the attackers dumped 43 gigabytes of stolen data online. Three months later the city still had only 75% of systems restored. St. Paul is just one of at least half a dozen Minnesota cities hit in 2025. Municipal IT security in this country is a disaster and everyone knows it.