Social media posts received by WHBL News on Friday claim that 200Gb of data from the City of Sheboygan is being held for ransom by a fairly new hacker group called “Chort”, and it appears that the City is not the first, or only organization to be hit.
A user on the “X” platform – formerly Twitter – claimed that the City had fallen victim to Chort ransomware, which claims to have obtained the data in an attack that crippled the City’s data system earlier this month. The breach disabled communications infrastructure and reportedly compromised data. On November 10, the City stated in a release that “…we have not discovered evidence that any sensitive personal information has been compromised by this incident. Should we discover an impact to any sensitive personal information, we will notify those individuals as soon as possible and provide them with information and resources to assist.” The City confirmed in that message that it had received a request for payment of a ransom, and that it was cooperating fully with law enforcement and was incorporating their guidance into its response.
After WHBL News reached out to the City Administrator for a response about Chort on Friday afternoon, the City released a message asserting that “We’ve learned that unauthorized users have named the City of Sheboygan in a post and shared a screenshot displaying a list of file archives. However, no data has been posted publicly.”
It continued “At this time, there is no evidence that these unauthorized users have obtained sensitive data. The City continues to monitor the situation closely, working with cybersecurity specialists to safeguard its systems and to ensure the integrity of its network.” The City did not confirm that Chort was behind the attack.
The IT security company Comparitech, a pro-consumer website providing information tools, reviews and comparisons to help its readers in the US, UK and elsewhere, has been managing other attacks by Chort in the last several weeks, among them, the Bartow County, Georgia School System which suffered a week-long cyber attack by Chort in mid-October. The company says that it has recorded 54 confirmed attacks on US schools and colleges so far this year, impacting 263,470 records in total, and the average ransom demand has been nearly $500,000.
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