The Virginia Attorney General’s Office, located in Richmond, Virginia, was hit by a sophisticated cyberattack on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, forcing officials to shut down computer systems and revert to paper court filings as authorities investigate. Chief Deputy Attorney General Steven G. Popps informed the office’s 700 employees in an email, sent from his smartphone due to the outage. The attack, detected around 6:45 a.m., prompted immediate notification to the Virginia State Police, the FBI, and the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. Officials said there has been no ransom demand, and no other state agencies appear to have been affected.
The cyberattack comes amid a rise in threats against the attorney general’s office, particularly since Attorney General Jason S. Miyares was placed on a Russian government blacklist in 2023. While the nature of the attack remains unclear, officials believe it was caught early, minimizing potential damage. The incident follows similar cyberattacks on government offices, including a 2021 breach of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office that took weeks to resolve. Investigators are working to determine the source and scope of the breach while IT teams focus on restoring affected systems.
