Oregon County Hit by Ransomware Attack

An Oregon county hit by wildfires and a fall surge in Covid-19 cases is now dealing with the fallout from a cyber-attack.

Jackson County’s website is currently down following a recent ransomware attack on the county’s web-hosting service provider, Managed.com. The company took down all its servers on Monday after reportedly becoming the latest target of REvil. 

A status update issued by Managed.com on November 19 said: “On Nov. 16, the Managed.com environment was attacked by a coordinated ransomware campaign. To ensure the integrity of our customers’ data, the limited number of impacted sites were immediately taken offline. Upon further investigation and out of an abundance of caution, we took down our entire system to ensure further customer sites were not compromised. 

“Our Technology and Information Security teams are working diligently to eliminate the threat and restore our customers to full capacity. Our first priority is the safety and security of your data. We are working directly with law enforcement agencies to identify the entities involved in this attack. As more information is available, we will communicate directly with you.”

With Jackson County’s regular website, jacksoncountyor.org, still inoperable, the county has established an alternate page, jacksoncounty.org, to allow the public to access key links on property taxes, 2020 election results, marriage applications, and public virtual meetings of the county Board of Commissioners during the outage.

On November 17, the county tweeted: “The Managed.com outage is still affecting our main public website. Internal county systems and data are not affected. Key online services remain available at jacksoncounty.org. No ETA yet to restore full public website. Thanks for your patience.”

The attack on their service provider couldn’t have come at a worse time for Jackson County. In addition to dealing with a rise in the number of coronavirus cases, the county is also taking the lead on recovery efforts related to what has been one of the most destructive seasons in Oregon’s wildfire history. 

Earlier this week, Oregon announced free programs to clear hazardous fire-related debris from residential and business properties, then remove any remaining ash, rubble, burned vehicles, damaged trees, and debris.