MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2023 North Bay Business Journal 3

Cyberattack on real estate listings

locks agents out of property details
Outage paralyzes industry,
affecting North Bay
agents, clients, others
By JEFF QUACKENBUSH
The North Bay Business Journal
A cyberattack locked thousands of real
estate agents in the Bay Area and in certain
markets nationwide out of being able to add
or update property information beginning
Aug. 8.
Days after the cyberattack, Karen “KB”
Holmgren, president and CEO of Bay Area
Real Estate Information Service wrote, “We
do not yet have a firm (estimated time) for
the return of our MLS system.” Better
known as BAREIS, the Santa Rosa-based
multiple listing service serves five of the
six North Bay counties.
The ransomware attack hit Rapattoni
Corp., a Southern California data services
company that hosts multiple listing services
for BAREIS and other MLS sites.
Ransomware is malicious software that
uses some form of ruse to lure recipients
to activate it, digitally locking away data on
the target system then offering to unlock it
usually at a steep price.
Holmgren said she’s heard no indication
that personal information was compro-
mised.
But the attack effectively froze property
information viewable to the public on real
estate websites that pull data from MLS sites
as well as for agents who handle the listings
and those with clients shopping for homes.
“It's paralyzed the real estate industry,”
said agent Peg King of Coldwell Banker in
Petaluma. “We can't add listings. We can't
make price changes. We have no idea how
to show properties unless we try to figure
out who has something listed.”
In the days following, BAREIS set up an
electronic system that allowed listing agents
to submit changes to property listings and
for other agents to see the changes. But
agents were encouraged to call listing
agents to double-check information.
Another big help came from the North-
ern California alliance of seven multiple
listing services, Holmgren said. In place
for over a decade, the NorCal MLS Alliance
arrangement synchronizes listing informa-
tion between the services every 15 minutes.
So when the attack took down the servers
hosting the BAREIS and San Francisco
MLSes, the data as of that time was on the
five other services systems.
MetroList Services, an alliance member
based in Sacramento with over 23,000 users,
is also a Rapattoni customer, but its data
center is in the Sacramento area and was
unaffected, according to Dave Howe, CEO of
MetroList. Rapattoni staff alerted MetroList
of the attack in progress, and the data link
was severed with the affected servers before
the ransomware spread to Sacramento.
Since BAREIS, San Francisco and
MetroList use a similar Rapattoni system,
MetroList offered users of the other two
systems temporary access to view archived
listing information.
Several days without MLS access can add
up for a brokerage, according to Gerrett Sne-
daker, broker and partner in Better Homes
and Gardens Real Estate|Wine Country
“We can’t add
listings. We can’t
make price changes.
We have no idea how
to show properties.”
PEG KING, Coldwell Banker real estate agent
Group and Better Homes and Gardens
Real Estate|Ming Tree. The Sonoma-based
operations added just over 1,000 listings in
July, or roughly 35 a day.
That said, August has historically been
a slower time in local real estate, so the
outage may not have impacted overall
activity for the month, Snedaker said in an
email. He also serves on the BAREIS board
as treasurer.
“We may revert to more face-to-face
contact with our fellow agents for a while,
which I believe won’t be a bad thing,” Sne-
daker said.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construc-
tion and real estate. Reach him at jquack-
enbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

Solar-energy facility inches closer to reality

American Canyon site
eventually could power
1,000 homes
By EDWARD BOOTH
The Press Democrat
An undeveloped, L-shaped 6.68-acre piece of
land along Highway 29 in American Canyon is
set to be transformed into a solar energy facility
that could power about 1,000 homes, following
approval by the city’s planning commission
late last month.
The facility, planned at 5381 Broadway on the
north edge of city limits, would use about 5,136
solar panels — covering about 125,000 square
feet — to generate about three megawatts
of energy for the Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
power grid, according to commission agenda
documents.
The space will also feature boat and recre-
ational vehicle storage, with 253 parking spots
— all covered by solar panels. The plan also
includes a 600-square-foot office and RV dump
stations.
The planned entryway for the area is off
Highway 29, agenda documents note.
The American Canyon Planning Commission
gave its unanimous support to the project at a
July 27 meeting.
Developer Rick Hess told the commission
the project might be the simplest he’s brought
before the city, and that it seemed to fit right
into the City Council’s goals to bring renewable
energy to American Canyon.
“I’m happy to say that I think this is the first
project coming along that I think will accom-
plish the stated goals by the city,” Hess said at RH HESS DEVELOPMENT
the meeting. “It’s pretty straightforward.” A top-down rendering of the planned solar facility in American Canyon.