The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office hackers destroyed data from within the agency's IT department early Wednesday morning.
"It was not a security breach where the hackers retrieved information but they destroyed the recent system backup and encrypted the information on the main server, preventing access," Sheriff Bill Beam said, according to a press release.
The Sheriff's Office contacted the FBI to help investigate. The attack has left the Sheriff's Office website, where people can typically go to find information involving inmates, offline.
A ransomware attack is a type of cybercrime in which a hacker seizes an organization's data, and then charges a fee to return access to it.
The city of Concord reported a similar attack on Friday.
Mecklenburg County was targeted in a ransomware attack in 2017. County officials refused to pay a $23,000 ransom after an employee inadvertently clicked on a phishing email, according to The Charlotte Observer.
©2019 Gaston Gazette, Gastonia, N.C. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
