Washington County pays $350,000 ransom after cyberattack
WASHINGTON, Pa. (KDKA) — The Washington County Board of Commissioners formally voted on Thursday on handling the recent cyberattack.
Some have questioned the transparency of the process. The questions about transparency have been because of secret and emergency meetings. According to the solicitor, some of that was because of the deadlines set up by the cybercriminals.
Thursday's 2-1 vote by the board of commissioners to use up to $400,000 to address the almost $350,000 ransom payment and about $20,000 cost to pay a company to handle the payment. January's cyberattack against the county shut down several county services.
"Basically, paralyzing all of the county's operations," Washington County Solicitor Gary Sweat said.
The vote to put this all into motion happened back on Feb. 6. It was an emergency meeting because that was the deadline to pay the ransom to the alleged Russian criminals. They had until 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 6 to pay or not.
"The hackers had obtained large amounts of data from the county computer system," Sweat said.
According to Sweat, the meetings fell under the Sunshine Act for emergency meetings. Ultimately, the county did pay the ransom.
Commissioner Larry Maggi was not happy because he felt this just invites more attacks from cyber criminals.
"I find this repugnant that we are giving into cyber criminals," Maggi said.
Board Chairman Nick Sherman agreed it wasn't ideal to pay the Russian cybercriminals, though he said the data they had could be very dangerous. County records have data on children, and Sherman didn't want that on the dark web.
"Children of Washington County who are in severe need of services. Children who have been abused. Children who have been abducted," Commissioner Sherman said.
Experts have told KDKA-TV that they advise groups to not pay the ransom when attacked. At this point, the county said 80% of its system has been restored since paying the ransom.
The money to pay for this came from the American Rescue Plan funds.