The BlackByte ransomware gang has claimed Augusta, Georgia, as its latest victim.
In a post on their website, BlackByte claim to have stolen a huge trove of data from the cities computer network and are currently leaking 10GB of data as proof.
System breach
The office of the Mayor of Augusta published a notice on the 24th May stating that the City of Augusta began experiencing technical difficulties on Sunday 21st May which was unrelated to an outage the network suffered the previous week.
An investigation was instigated during which it was identified that they were the victim of an unauthorised system access.
A day later (25th May), the Mayors office released an updated statement saying that “Recent media reports regarding Augusta, Georgia being held hostage for $50 million in a ransomware attack are incorrect.”
This statement is factually correct – According to the BlackByte website, the demand to delete the data from their systems is USD$400,000, and the demand to download the data is USD$300,000
