On March 6, Benjamin Freed reported:
Computer systems in rural Jackson County, Georgia, were knocked offline over the weekend after being hit with a ransomware virus. The entire county government’s email system is offline, and some departments, including law enforcement, have had to resort to conducting their operations entirely on paper.
“Everything we have is down,” Sheriff Janis Mangum said. “We are doing our bookings the way we used to do it before computers. We’re operating by paper in terms of reports and arrest bookings. We’ve continued to function. It’s just more difficult.”
The type of ransomware and the payment demanded were not disclosed.
Read more on StateScoop.
Today, OnlineAthens reports that the county wound up paying about $400,000 to get the decryption key after a Ryuk ransomware attack.
“They demanded ransom,” Poe said. “We had to make a determination on whether to pay. We could have literally been down months and months and spent as much or more money trying to get our system rebuilt.”
Read more on AthensOnline.