The systems of Georgetown County have been hacked at the end of January, and the county staff is still working to rebuild its computer network.

The systems of Georgetown County have been hit with a sophisticated cyber attack at the end of January, and the county staff is still working to recover from the incident.

The attack chain began with a malicious email, the intruders demanded the payment of a ransom to give back the control of the county’s systems to the its staff.

“Hackers sent an email Jan. 22 that allowed them to take over Georgetown County’s computers. They demanded a ransom to return the system to the county’s control, spokeswoman Jackie Broach said.” reads the associated press.

The county administration refused to pay the ransom and started cleaning infected systems, its IT experts have been working to restore the impacted network.

The county hired cybersecurity experts that have been involved in recovery operations. The cyber security confirmed that the attack that hit the county was sophisticated.

At the time of this writing, there is no indication that tax, employment or other private information was exfiltrated by the intruders.

The experts restored access to the email systems for about half of the employees at Georgetown County.

Georgetown County reported the incident to the authorities.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Georgetown County)

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