New Jersey county says malware attack took down phone lines, IT systems

One of the largest counties in New Jersey is dealing with a cyberattack that disrupted  the phone lines and IT systems used across government offices. 

Passaic County, home to nearly 600,000 people in Northern New Jersey, published a statement on Wednesday evening warning residents that it is aware of a “malware attack” affecting county IT systems and phone lines.

“Our team is actively working with federal and state officials to investigate and contain the issue,” the county said.

The county initially said its phone lines were down on Wednesday morning before confirming in the afternoon that the outages were caused by a cyberattack. 

After several ransomware attacks targeting large metropolitan areas from 2023 to 2025, cybercriminal operations have focused their efforts on smaller municipalities. Dozens of county and city governments have been targeted so far in 2026, including cities in Florida, Connecticut and West Virginia.

In addition to local governments, hospitals have been targeted in recent weeks by hackers. One of the largest hospitals in Mississippi spent weeks recovering from a ransomware attack and was finally able to restore normal operations on Monday following days of outages, closures and cancelled appointments.  

Officials in Passaic said “several other local governments in New Jersey have experienced similar incidents” — likely a reference to past ransomware attacks impacting Somerset County, Camden County, Bergen County, the township of Montclair and the city of Hoboken.