Key systems in Fulton County, Georgia, have been offline since last week when a “cyber incident” hit government systems. Although the county has done its best to continue operations as normal, phone lines, court systems, property records and more everything fell. The county has not yet confirmed details of the cyber incident, such as the group that may be behind it or the motivations for the attack. As of Tuesday, there did not appear to be a data breach. according to Robb Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.
Fulton County made headlines in August as the location where prosecutors chose to bring election interference charges against former President Donald Trump. But don't worry, officials assured the public that the case was not affected by the attack. “All election record-related documents are kept in a separate, highly secure system that has not been hacked and is designed to make unauthorized access extremely difficult, if not impossible,” said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Despite this, Fulton County's election systems do not appear to be the target of the attack. Although the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections was closed, “there is no indication that this event was related to the election process.” Fulton County said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, the respective technology systems of Fulton County and the (Georgia) Secretary of State have been isolated from each other as part of the response efforts.”
So far, the impact of the attack has varied widely, from delays in obtaining marriage certificates to disruption of court hearings. On Wednesday, a communications problem during the outage even allowed a murder suspect to escape. Manhunt continues after authorities released by mistake the suspect while he was being transferred between Clayton County and Fulton County for a hearing.
The county has not released information on when it expects the systems to be fully restored, but it is working with law enforcement on recovery efforts. Meanwhile, as voters struggle to access some government services, Fulton County has released a list of contact details for the departments concerned. Fulton County also issued a full list of affected systems.
While the government computer outages were occurring, a local student also hacked into Fulton County Schools systems, according to StateScoop Friday. The school system is still determining whether any personal information may have been disclosed, but most services returned online Monday.