British Library Confirms Ransomware Attack Caused Outages

After announcing that it had experienced a major outage at the beginning of the month, The British Library confirmed on Nov. 14 that the disruption was due to a ransomware attack.

And recovery has been slow. Three weeks after the attack, the library’s website is still offline. The IT outage affects the library’s online systems, services, and onsite facilities such as the Wi-Fi.

In an update on its website, the facility — which is the United Kingdom’s national library, as its name suggests — noted that it has taken protective measures in response to the attack and is undergoing a forensic investigation with the help of the London Metropolitan Police and the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), along with private cybersecurity specialists.

The library noted that in the next few weeks, it will be able to restore many of its services, “but some disruption may persist for longer.” In its cyber incident update, it did not detail what ransomware gang was behind the ransomware attack other than that it was “a group known for such criminal activity.”

In its notice, the British Library affirmed that many of its public events will continue as planned and all of its in-person and live-streamed events are to continue. Its staff can be contacted by email while its website is down, but they are receiving a high volume of inquiries, the institution warned.