Nearly 500K people affected by Columbus city hack
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- An estimated half a million people were impacted in the ransomware attack that hit Columbus in late July.
NBC4 Investigates broke the news that hundreds of thousands of people’s sensitive information was compromised, despite Mayor Andrew Ginther’s initial claims that the data lacked value.
Now, we are getting our first estimate of the impact, but it isn’t coming directly from the city of Columbus and was not mentioned in Monday night's update to city council. We know this because the attorney general of Maine posted an update on his website.
The legal team for the city of Columbus, Dinsmore, sent a regulatory filing to the state of Maine, letting it know that 24 Maine residents were impacted by the Columbus breach.
In this notice, Dinsmore wrote, "Total number of persons affected (including residents): 500000.”
This estimate and notification to another state were not mentioned in Monday night's update to council. There was also no mention of the status of the breach report, which will show us what data held by the city was accessed and stolen by the ransomware group, which posted it on the dark web.
Monday’s update was very quick, with the city’s Department of Technology Director Sam Orth making another push for people to sign up for the credit monitoring offered through the city. The deadline is Nov. 29, but he said certain groups will receive notice about an extended deadline. He did not say which ones.
"We encourage everyone eligible to sign up,” Orth said. “We do want to note that there are some unique groups which may receive direct notification of different deadlines. Unless you receive a notification directly from us, you should enroll by Nov. 29.”
He also shared that city desktop access was restored last week.
"Our primary focus is now on restoring remote access, including email, which we are starting to roll out this week on our Workspace One platform,” Orth said. “Given the demand, we will be working with departments to prioritize their users. Full implementation is expected to take several weeks.”
Once again we asked for an interview with Orth and were told he did not have time. He has not made time for an interview since the hack happened, in late July. We will continue asking.