Georgia County Pays $400,000 to Ransomware Attackers

From bankinfosecurity.com

Georgia County Pays $400,000 to Ransomware Attackers

Officials in Jackson County, Georgia, along with the FBI are investigating a ransomware attack that crippled IT systems over a two-week period. Struggling to recover from the outage, local officials reportedly paid a ransom worth $400,000 in bitcoins to restore IT systems and infrastructure.

Jackson County Manager Kevin Poe told Online Athens that the county government decided to cough up the ransom late last week after IT systems had been offline since about March 1, forcing officials to use paper and pen to complete numerous task, although police radios and the 911 system continued to function.

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