One of the crucial energetic ransomware teams has taken credit score for an assault earlier this 12 months on a big county in Georgia about an hour away from Atlanta.
Forsyth County officers had acknowledged an assault in June, however provided few particulars about what occurred. On Tuesday, the AlphV gang took credit score for the assault and added the county to its leak web site, threatening to reveal 350GB of allegedly stolen information.
Russell Brown, director of the county’s Division of Communications, informed Recorded Future Information that earlier this 12 months, the county “detected and contained” a ransomware assault on its community. Brown wouldn’t touch upon whether or not AlphV was concerned or whether or not a ransom might be paid.
“As quickly as we realized of the cyber safety incident, we started working to analyze, decide the results of the incident and implement needed efforts to guard the privateness and safety of County residents and stakeholders,” Brown mentioned.
“As we’ve continued to actively monitor this example, we not too long ago realized that an unauthorized get together launched some County data acquired from our community. We take this very severely and are conducting an intensive evaluation to find out what and whose data is doubtlessly concerned.”
Brown added that the county is working with legislation enforcement, cybersecurity corporations and information forensics consultants on their response to the incident. He famous that all the county’s important companies are operational.
The county despatched out breach notification letters in June warning the county’s greater than 250,000 residents that information have been faraway from county servers throughout the tried assault. After finishing a evaluate, they discovered that Social Safety numbers and drivers license numbers have been accessed.
On the time, they mentioned their investigators searched the darkish net and didn’t see any indication that the info had been provided on the market.
AlphV, additionally labeled BlackCat by researchers, claimed Tuesday to have Social Safety numbers, monetary studies, insurance coverage data, mortgage purposes, enterprise agreements and extra.
Within the breach notification letters, county residents are urged to enroll within the one 12 months of free identification monitoring companies from Experian and to “stay vigilant.”
The assault on Forsyth County is the most recent in Georgia this 12 months after town of Augusta had a ransomware incident in June.
Municipalities in Wisconsin, California, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, Oregon, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio and elsewhere have confronted off in opposition to ransomware gangs in 2023.
Ransomware knowledgeable Brett Callow famous that that is the 53rd native authorities within the U.S. to take care of a ransomware assault this 12 months, with at the very least 31 having had information stolen.
#Alphv has listed Forsyth County, which disclosed a #ransomware incident in June. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/n2AxChikzG
— Brett Callow (@BrettCallow) August 29, 2023
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Jonathan Greig
Jonathan Greig is a Breaking Information Reporter at Recorded Future Information. Jonathan has labored throughout the globe as a journalist since 2014. Earlier than shifting again to New York Metropolis, he labored for information retailers in South Africa, Jordan and Cambodia. He beforehand lined cybersecurity at ZDNet and TechRepublic.
