Ransomware attack recovery underway at Mississippi county

Officials at George County, Mississippi, have noted ongoing recovery efforts from a ransomware attack over the weekend that disrupted almost all of its government in-office computers, according to The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. George County had its network compromised after a link in a phishing email masquerading as a system update notification was opened by a county employee, while a succeeding brute force attack facilitated the encryption of the county's entire system, said George County Communications Director Ken Flanagan. "It was a highly coordinated attack and it also appears that after they encrypted all three servers, they went through each department looking at each individual computer to see what was the best data in there," Flanagan added. Such an attack has prompted the approval of emergency cybersecurity service spending and the county has since restored one of its three servers and one of its major office systems by the afternoon of July 19. While ransomware attacks against local governments across the U.S. during the first quarter have declined over the same period last year, threat actors have ramped up intrusions, with attacks in the second quarter higher than during the same period last year, noted Recorded Future ransomware analyst Allan Liska.