A ransomware attack knocked the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in Brownstown, Indiana, offline last week, forcing dispatchers to work from Seymour Police Department computers and officers to file reports in Word documents as technicians rebuilt damaged systems.
The attack left computers, Wi-Fi and the department’s police report filing system inaccessible. The Indiana Daily Student, citing Lt. Adam Nicholson, reported the incident affected the agency’s “entire network.” Nicholson told the newspaper on March 25 that the attack had occurred the previous week.
The outage disrupted day-to-day law enforcement operations. Nicholson told the student newspaper that dispatchers were working from computers at the Seymour Police Department while officers wrote reports in Microsoft Word because the normal filing system was down.
County officials have not publicly identified who may have been behind the attack, and no public claim of responsibility had surfaced as of publication. Jackson County did not respond to an emailed request for comment from DysruptionHub.
Nicholson said it was unclear how much data could be recovered from external hard drives. He told the Indiana Daily Student that files tied to the county sex offender registry were among the data at risk, along with other records stored on the network.
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The sheriff’s office is wiping affected computers, replacing hardware and rebuilding on new infrastructure, according to Nicholson. He said the county would not pay a ransom and hoped to have a police report filing system back online by next week.
Nicholson said the malware likely entered through an email and may have remained dormant for a day or two before activating, though that has not been independently confirmed by public technical findings. The Indiana Daily Student also reported that the FBI’s Indianapolis field office declined to comment on whether it was involved, while the Indiana Department of Homeland Security referred questions back to the sheriff’s office.
The sheriff’s Facebook page linked on the department’s website also appeared unavailable at the time of review, though there was no public indication that its status was tied to the attack.
The Jackson County incident is the latest in a string of county government cyber disruptions across the country. In March, a ransomware attack hit the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department and jail in Tennessee, disrupting email and inmate booking. Earlier this year, Winona County, Minnesota, said ransomware affected its county network as officials worked to keep emergency services running, and Passaic County, New Jersey, said a malware attack knocked out county phone lines while state and federal officials assisted.
Jackson County, which includes Brownstown and Seymour, had a population of 46,428 in the 2020 Census.
Officials have not said when full records access will be restored or whether any data was taken, but the sheriff’s office said it hoped to have its report filing system back online next week.
