Right, Sausalito, California. Picturesque, charming, probably smells faintly of sea salt and artisanal coffee. A place where, presumably, the biggest daily drama involves a rogue seagull making off with someone's croissant. Or so you'd think.

Turns out, even postcard-perfect towns aren't immune to the joys of a good old-fashioned hacking attempt.

Apparently, this week saw the Sausalito City Council having to, quite dramatically, *call off a meeting*. And why, you ask? Not a sudden outbreak of interpretive dance, nor a zoning dispute gone truly bananas. No, friends, it was a "blunt force" hacking attempt, according to the city manager. A blunt force hacking attempt! It sounds like something you'd see in a really bad action movie. Apparently, some digital ne'er-do-wells decided Sausalito's computer systems needed a good rattling. Chris Zapata, the aforementioned city manager, helpfully clarified that over 190,000 attempts were made to compromise staff passwords in under 24 hours. 190,000! That's dedication, I'll give them that. Misguided, likely illegal, but undeniably dedicated. Thank goodness, Sausalito had recently toughened up its user authentication protocols. It seems someone in the IT department was actually paying attention, so the city’s security measures put a swift end to the attack, Zapata proudly announced. That's a win for complex passwords and a loss for hackers everywhere. What was it, though? Did they want to leak embarrassing council memos? Replace the minutes with limericks about municipal budgets? We'll likely never know. The city, quite sensibly, is keeping mum about the specifics, citing security reasons. Can't give the bad guys any pointers, can we? This isn’t the first digital dust-up in Marin County, either. Last year, the Marin Housing Authority got relieved of nearly a million dollars earmarked for public housing rehabilitation. And back in the day, some cunning crook bamboozled county finance staff into wiring over $300,000 to a dodgy bank account. Gosh. So, what's the takeaway? Even idyllic locales aren't safe from digital shenanigans. Maybe it's time to invest in a good password manager, or maybe we should teach seagulls how to identify phishing scams. Either way, Sausalito's dodgy data day serves as a timely reminder that even the quaintest of places need to keep a watchful eye on the digital frontier. #Cybersecurity #Sausalito #Hacking #LocalGovernment #DataBreach #California #PasswordSecurity #DigitalSecurity