The Boston Public Library (BPL) disclosed a cyberattack that occurred on Wednesday following a system-wide technical outage. BPL is the third-largest public library in the United States, following the federal Library of Congress and the New York Public Library based on the total number of items.

The library serves almost 4 million people through its central library collection offline and online.

The library posted a notice on their official site cautioning users about the ongoing technical outage allegedly caused by a cyberattack that affected its systems on Wednesday. The notification reads, "The library is currently experiencing a significant system outage, and online library services that require login are unavailable."

The library also stated that "On Wednesday morning, 8/25, the Boston Public Library experienced a systemwide technical outage due to a cybersecurity attack, pausing public computer and public printing services, as well as some online resources."

The library immediately notified law enforcement and closed all the affected systems to isolate the issue.

The investigation in collaboration with the law enforcement and the Mayor's IT experts is ongoing and has not yet encountered any indication of employee or patron data seized from the compromised systems.

IT Department restoring impacted systems:

The IT department at BPL is constantly trying to restore the data on all affected devices and services.

Kurt Mansperger, Chief Technology Officer of the BPL, stated that "We apologize for any inconvenience this outage may have caused patrons. Thank you for your patience as our team and law enforcement officials work to restore our digital services and protect the library from future attacks."

BPL initially informed the users regarding the attack through a tweet stating that the attack impacted its computer, printers, and several online resources.

BPL has refused to comment on anything related to the details of the attack until the investigation is not over.