ATLANTA – A cyber attack on government systems in Fulton County, Georgia over the weekend affected a company’s offices. district attorney who judges the former president Donald Trump on charges of election interference, local officials said Monday.
All desktop phones, intranets and devices using county servers are down for all departments, including District Attorney Fannie Willis’ office, a county official with knowledge of the situation said.
County staff received email notification of the outage on Monday, the official said.
Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts confirmed at a press briefing Monday afternoon that the outage, which he said affected the county’s telephone, court and tax systems, was “the result of a cyber security incident” and that law enforcement was investigating.
“We don’t have a specific time frame yet on when these systems will be restored,” Pitts said.
“At this time we are not aware of the transfer of sensitive information about citizens or employees, but we will continue to look into this matter carefully,” he said.
A spokesman for Willis’ office declined to comment on the cyberattack.
Willis has several court dates, including this week, when he is expected to answer allegations that he had an inappropriate relationship with a special counsel involved in the election case in the case involving Trump and his co-defendants.
Four of the original defendants pleaded guilty, while Trump and the others pleaded not guilty.
The district said in a news release While most county offices will remain open Sunday, he said certain operations will be restricted and his Department of Information Technology is handling the outage.
A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Atlanta office said in a statement Monday that the agency was “in contact” with the county about the incident.
“While we can’t comment on any specific incident, the FBI regularly provides advice to the public and private sectors about cyber threats to help them protect against the actions of cybercriminals,” Tony Thomas said in a statement. “We are working with our interagency partners to identify, prosecute and defeat all those involved in cybercrime.”
The spokesperson of the Georgian Bureau of Investigation said that the matter is not being investigated.
Blayne Alexander reported from Atlanta and Zoë Richards from New York.
Charlie Gill contributed.