FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Fulton County government officials announced Tuesday that they did not pay any ransom to the group that claimed to have been holding sensitive information from the county hostage for $1.2 billion.
This comes after the National Crime Agency UK said that the cybercrime group, known as LockBit 3.0, had its services disrupted as a result of international law enforcement action.
Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon that last week, screenshots of county documents were posted on LockBit's website. This past Friday was the deadline cybercriminals set -- either they would be paid, or they would release the information.
There's been speculation ever since on whether the county decided to pay the ransom, as the county looked to have been removed from the website before law enforcement took control of it on Monday. Pitts said that no ransom was ever paid and that officials do not know why LockBit removed them.
"After careful consideration and weighing many factors last week, the board of commissioners decided we could not in good conscience use Fulton County taxpayer funds to make a payment," Pitts said. "We did not pay, nor did anyone pay on our behalf."
Pitts said the county will continue its own investigation in addition to law enforcement's to understand the full picture of what occurred and if any information had been taken. Pitts said the county does not know whether any information has been stolen due to the cybersecurity incident and that the evaluation and investigation will take some time.
"We still do not know," Pitts said. "But if we determine that people's personal information was involved in this incident, we will make all legally required notifications."
You can watch the full press conference here:
He also stated that they plan to provide any possibly affected people with resources to help protect personal information.
"I can not say enough how seriously we are taking this situation," Pitts said.
Previous reporting by 11Alive said cybersecurity experts who have seen some of the data leaked online said it goes beyond financial information or social security numbers. They said it includes sensitive health information for residents in the county who have cancer or who are living with HIV.
Pitts said the county is cooperating with law enforcement as the investigation is still ongoing. In general, Fulton County officials have also been making progress on bringing back online services that were knocked out due to widespread outages created by this cybersecurity incident.