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An ongoing cyberattack in Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes parts of Atlanta, has crippled some government systems, disrupting court records, tax processing and other services.
The outage has been resolved, and it’s unclear when systems will return to normal.
County Attorney Fani Willis’ office lost its phones, website and court system website, according to a source with direct knowledge of the case.
Willis indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants in a 2020 election subversion case. Officials said there was no connection between the attack and the election subversion case, nor did they give any motive.
The communication, court and tax systems have all been brought down, said Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts in a news briefing Monday. A source with first-ha nd knowledge in Fulton County told CNN the internet and Odyssey court access are down as well. Odyssey court records at one point said the system could be down until February 5, but they were later updated to remove the timetable.
Pitts said Monday that the cyberattack has caused a widespread system outage and that the investigation was still in the preliminary stages.
“We at Fulton County take cybersecurity seriously and we place a high priority on the protection of sensitive information,” Pitts said. “At this time, we are not aware of any transfer of sensitive information about citizens or employees, but we will continue to look carefully at this issue.”
Access to asset tax transactions and the judicial formula (adding gun registration and marriage licenses) was limited during the outage, and the county’s data generation arm is fixing the problem, according to a statement posted on its website.
The Atlanta FBI told CNN it was aware of the incident and was in contact with the Fulton County IT Department but declined to comment on the main points of the cyberattack.
“The FBI advises the public and private sector on cyber threats to help them protect against the movements of cybercriminals,” the FBI said in a statement. “We are collaborating with our interagency partners to identify, prosecute, and defeat everyone involved in cybercrime. »
Ransomware attacks and other hacking threats have plagued state and local governments for years, which have neither the money nor the staff to deal with the threat. In 2018, the city of Atlanta suffered a ransomware cyberattack that cost it millions of dollars, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A 2019 attack on Baltimore city computers disrupted the city’s ability to process water bills for three months, according to the Baltimore Sun. Baltimore officials estimated at the time that the ransomware attack would cost the city at least $18 million.
In January 2022, two separate cyberattacks disrupted the public in New Mexico’s most populous county: one forced the temporary closure of Albuquerque Public School and another destroyed cameras in a local jail.
U. S. cybersecurity officials have called in the U. S. U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seek to bolster the defenses of state and local governments with federal money and a program to warn businesses and organizations that they may be vulnerable to hacking threats.
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