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Georgia Government Computer Servers Targeted With Ransomware Attack

Ransomware Attack on Georgia Government Computer: A cyber attack has been occurred within the Dawson Country Georgia which is targeting the Government computer servers.

According to the experts of the country IT analysts Will Stattuck, the Dawson Country servers which were attacked on the Monday afternoon, April 23rd.

Shattuck also has updated the country commissioners and the audience members at the board work session on the Tuesday afternoon regarding this potential damage which was incurred and the status of the ongoing investigations.

Shattuck was at first notified of these issues around 2:30 PM on Monday by the tax assessor’s office; where they claimed that they were unable to save the files.

Later the calls were started flooding from many other departments regarding this issues as soon as the IT department began the investigations they found out that they discovered the ransomware attacks.

Ransomware is basically an attack that encrypts the writable data and then only the attacker or hacker has the decrypt key.

Shattuck said that, “We started shutting down the servers and trying to minimize the amount of damage, as it spreads very quickly, though the networks and through the different servers.”

This ransomware attacked the country exchange servers and as well as the phone and internet services.

Shattuck added saying, ”We did work through the night to get phones and internet back up, some of the other servers will take longer to repair and to work through.”

Carver Security Systems were called on the Tuesday morning to check out whether the ransomware has taken out or it is still spreading over the networks.

Shattuck has also said that he was contacted by the Secret Service who believes that the attack was originated from United Kingdom.

Shattuck could not conform that if any data was compromised on the entry point. The country does have the cyber insurance policy but they did not have the emergency management plans for a ransomware attack prior to the Monday.

According to the U.S Department of Homeland Security, there were almost more than the 4000 ransomware attacks that have occurred daily, since January 1, 2016.

The department said in memo, “This is 300 percent increase over the approximately 1,000 attacks per day seen in 2015”.

According to the Department, they stated that ransomware attack even after paying the ransom this does not guarantee that you will be provided the decryption key they added, “Paying a ransom does not guarantee an organization will regain access to their data.”

 

 

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