The Friendly City has had some not-so-friendly interactions, with both city hall and the police department being impacted by cyber-attacks. What's uncertain, at this point, is if the two are connected.

Woodstock Chief Administrative Officer David Creery, says signs of trouble at city hall came on Friday afternoon and were confirmed a few hours later.

"It was then through a test email on the early hours of Saturday morning, with no email being received, where it became apparent there was something more at work."

On Monday morning the Woodstock Police Service detected its own cyberattack. But Chief Daryl Longworth says it's uncertain if the two are linked.

"We're treating both as two separate incidents. As the investigation unravels we'll make further determinations from there."

These types of cyber-attacks have crippled the operations of businesses and government agencies around the world. But Creery says that doesn't appear to be the case in Woodstock.

Although use of computers was immediately limited, leaving people to do a lot of work the old fashioned way, with pen and paper, Creery says most people wouldn’t realize operations had been affected.

"We're in a reasonably good shape compared to others. Our website is hosted externally, so it's third party, so it continues to function. Things like recreation programming is an external third-party vendor that provides those services for us."

Longworth says the most important elements of police operations are also unaffected, "Absolutely no impact on 911, the ability to call in and request police services, our ability to communicate with officers on the street."

These attacks tend to take one of two forms, a threat to steal personal information or, more commonly, a threat to use malware to cripple systems unless a ransom is paid.

We learned late last week that Stratford paid a $75,000 ransom after a similar attack in April.

Creery says Woodstock officials still aren’t sure what they’re dealing with, "It does have the appearance of being a ransom. But we have not, as yet, received a ransom demand and we have not reached out.”

Both the city and police are using third-party security experts and are hoping to have most systems restored by week's end.

While there's no indication there's been a loss of information, the city is encouraging residents to monitor their online accounts for any signs of tampering.