COLUMBUS, Ohio — The City of Columbus’ investigation on the cyber security attack from last month now reveals new details.  

Data containing sensitive employee information that hackers claim to have released to the dark web is unusable, according to city leaders.

What You Need To Know

  • City leaders said the data hackers claim to have released to the dark web is either encrypted or corrupt, making the data unusable

  • Hackers claim to have 6.5 terabytes of data it stole from the city, but Mayor Ginther says they have much less

  • The city is still offering Experian credit monitoring to all current and former employees

Hackers claim to have 6.5 terabytes of data it stole from the city, but Mayor Ginther says they have much less, and the sensitive data published on the dark web is either encrypted or corrupt. 

Data was leaked Thursday after hackers claimed to ask for $2 million in ransom, but now the Mayor shares a ransom wasn’t requested and that the stolen data backup that were published were either encrypted or corrupt.

“We believe that the screenshots of the data files are the most compelling asset they had,” Mayor Andrew Ginther said. “The majority of the data obtained by the threat actor is completely and totally unusable. We believe this is why the data auction failed.“ 

Mayor Ginther says personal information wasn’t dumped on the dark web, but it was temporarily accessed during the attack. 

To prevent more data from being stolen, the city is still offering Experian credit monitoring to all current and former employees. 

Meanwhile, the investigation is still ongoing, and Ginther says he’s slowly working on bringing all systems back online. 

“This risk is diminished, but the event is not over,” he said. ”Restoration of our systems will take weeks, and the investigation will take months. This investigation continues and we will continue to share what we can. Ultimately, I’m confident that we have taken the best possible course of action in a pretty unprecedented attack.”

The FBI, Homeland Security and the city continue the investigation. 

Ginther also says the city has invested 12 million in cybersecurity over the last five years but hopes to invest more to prevent future attacks. 

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