BULLOCH COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) – An investigation is underway to find who is responsible for a cyber-attack on the Ogeechee Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s office.
The DA offices in Bulloch, Screven, and Effingham counties are closed to the public while they investigate.
District Attorney Busbee tells WTOC over the phone that they are “extremely lucky” that no active case files were hacked with the potential of losing terabytes worth of data.
His office says court hearings are still happening because they have paper copies of case files.
Georgia Southern Professor of Information Technologies, Hayden Wimmer, says he believes the District Attorney’s office was not targeted, but rather an easy opportunity for the hackers.
“It’s becoming increasingly common and often times just like anything else it becomes a crime of opportunity right. So, they may not have been necessarily looking for Ogeechee, but they found a way to breach them,” said Professor Wimmer.
Professor Wimmer says these cyber-attacks are becoming more common in small governments more than anything else.
“Usually, their technology is a little behind what industry is. They don’t have much money to have a bunch of cyber security experts and money to update their computers every couple of year. So, it makes it easier for them to get in,” said Professor Wimmer.
District Attorney Busbee says that his costly decision to expand the contract with Georgia Tech for extra security proved to be the right one since they were able to stop the attack in little time.
He says the identity of these hackers is still under investigation.
Busbee says he has high hopes that hat he has high hopes that all of the offices will be back to normal and fully operational by next week.
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