A service that helped Cambridge and thousands of local communities nationwide notify residents of critical emergencies, CodeRed, wasn’t fully recovered Tuesday after a cyberattack last week exposed the personal information of subscribers. But Cambridge is still able to send out emergency notifications, city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said.
More than 29,000 Cambridge residents are enrolled in CodeRed, Warnick said Tuesday. The city’s daily email notified readers on the day of the cyberattack and urged subscribers to change their passwords at other websites if the passwords were the same as those used for CodeRed. Yet account access remains inaccessible for subscribers to change their passwords due to the hacking, Warnick said.
CodeRed operator OnSolve and its parent company, Crisis24, said Monday that “data potentially associated with the … platform has been published online” and “may include information for OnSolve CodeRed subscribers.” The data has generally included only “basic contact information,” the company said. The company has notified law enforcement, it said.
After the attack, OnSolve shut down the service and replaced it with a new CodeRed platform, but individual subscribers haven’t been able to get into their accounts.
In contrast, OnSolve’s customers – Cambridge and other communities – do have access to the new site, but it’s not yet connected to some emergency information sources such as automated weather alerts and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s nationwide emergency notification system. OnSolve advised customers to connect to these sources manually, and Warnick said the city will notify residents itself despite the loss of CodeRed.
OnSolve sells the service to localities such as Cambridge, enabling them to notify residents of emergencies such as severe weather, road closings and service disruptions and target the alerts to affected residents. Notifications can be made by phone, text, social media or the CodeRed app.
The city’s emergency communications center offers CodeRed to residents, though they can also sign up online without going through the city agency. The alert service is free to subscribers, although the city pays for it. The emergency communications center administers sign-ups and disenrollments, Warnick said.
CodeRed is not the same as the police department’s tip line, tip411, Warnick noted, and the city announcement said it’s not related to the federally managed emergency alert system deployed by the state, which “is recognizable by the telltale alert tone that residents may hear on TV, radio or via their cellphones.”
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