Several services provided by the Georgia Superior Court Clerks’ Cooperative Authority (GSCCCA) were temporarily unavailable in our area this week.
The Whitfield County Clerk of Superior Court, Babs Bailey, tells us a statewide cybersecurity incident affected the following GSCCCA-related services at her office Wednesday:
- Real estate eFiling
- Real estate indexing & searches
- PT-61 / online real estate search
- UCC filings
- Notary applications
- OBTS transmitting
- Any services that require GSCCCA website access
The Clerks’ Authority says they have since neutralized the threat, and all systems have returned to normal operation.
Their information technology team detected behavior consistent with an active hacking attempt on Friday, November 21. The FBI even reached out to them about the threat, advising they take public services offline while they secured the situation.
GSCCCA says they do not collect or store Social Security numbers or payment information, so that was not at risk of loss during the cyber attack.
They could not confirm if any data was stolen, but said they interrupted the ransomware attack before any encryption, destruction, or alteration of data occurred:
“We recognize that the temporary service outage was disruptive to the clerks, courts, partners, and citizens who rely on GSCCCA services every day. We sincerely apologize for this impact. However, it is important to understand that limiting public communication during an active intrusion is itself a best practice. Providing detailed information during an ongoing incident can unintentionally undermine containment efforts or provide actionable intelligence to the attacker.”
