Pembroke Pines issues warning to residents after alert-system cyberattack
Pembroke Pines residents are being told to take precautions after the city announced that CodeRED, the third-party platform it uses for emergency alerts, was affected by a cyberattack.
The OnSolve CodeRED platform is a system that issues mass emergency notifications and alerts for city, county and state government agencies.
This system differs from the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) such as Amber Alerts and nationwide test messages, because it is voluntary. EAS and WEA are federal systems that automatically reach nearly all phones.
Pembroke Pines uses the platform to issue alerts to residents through phone calls, emails and text messages in situations such as weather emergencies, public safety concerns or service outages.
The city posted on it Instagram on Tuesday, Dec. 2, that the impacted dataset may include users’ contact information, such as name, address, email address, phone numbers and passwords tied to their CodeRED profiles.
As a precaution, officials encouraged residents to change any passwords that match the one used for their CodeRED account, especially if they are reused across personal or professional logins.
The CodeRED link on the city’s website was unavailable as of Dec. 2. Pembroke Pines said it will provide updates as it receives them from CodeRED.
