JACKSON COUNTY, Ga. — A metro county official who helped negotiate a ransom demand by cyberhackers said the county did right by paying a hefty demand.
Channel 2's Tom Regan was in Jackson County on Wednesday with an inside look at the hack's impact on the jail and 911 center and how everyone involved managed the crisis.
It happened last March when hackers breached computers at the Jackson County Jail.
“It was all locked down. Your computer systems, everything," Sheriff Janis Magnum said.
Anything that needed a computer to work didn't.
“We had to pull out paper arrest bookings, paper incident reports,” Magnum said.
Instead of automated locks to open and close cells, it was back to the clunky metal keys.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Horror experience has 40-page waiver, medical check and is too scary to finish
- 2 dead when vehicle plunges 4 stories from parking garage
- Pepper spray released into congregation during sermon at New Birth church
Deputies couldn't use their laptops in their patrol cars to send and receive critical information.
Inmates who normally visited with family over a video link had to be escorted to a visitation center normally used by lawyers. Jailers had to cover up slots to prevent some from sliding in contraband.
“I never understood ransomware, until this happened,” Magnum said.
Not only was the jail impacted, but the screen in front of 911 operators suddenly scrambled and turned black.
“Everything stopped, so we went back to old-school maps, paper logs, just like it was going back 30 years,” 911 Assistant Director Barbara Adams said.
Soon after the attack came the demand.
“The message was basically a ransom note,” County Manager Kevin Poe said.
The county manager said after weighing options, county officials concluded not paying the ransom would end up costing more in recovering and rebuilding data, so they paid.
“There was a little bit of negotiations, but we ended paying $400,000 in Bitcoin,” Poe said.
The cybercriminals, perhaps from Russia or somewhere overseas, gave the county an encryption code to unlock the data. It worked.
“We ended up getting back to normal fairly quickly," Poe said.
Cox Media Group
