The megacode virus that shut down Lincoln County law enforcement’s computer network in March had some unintended benefits. Due to the virus, the county’s planned IT upgrades have been accelerated and unknown, pre-existing problems in the backup system used by law enforcement were discovered and corrected, Sheriff Todd Brackett said.
The computer network for Lincoln County law enforcement agencies was infected by the megacode virus in March and data was encrypted until a fee of 300 euros ($334) was paid in bitcoins, an untraceable currency. The computer system experienced periodic outages throughout April due to residual effects from the virus and pre-planned system upgrades, Brackett said.
According to Brackett, data not commonly accessed on the server was discovered to still be encrypted, resulting in temporary outages as the decryption code received in March was used to unlock the data. Due to the virus, it was discovered that the backup system used by law enforcement was not operating properly and only a fraction of the data entered by law enforcement was being recorded in the backup system, Brackett said.
No data was stolen or lost due to the megacode virus, Brackett said, and because of the virus, unknown problems with the backup system were fixed before data that could have been lost was lost.
Lincoln County has been in the process of upgrading its computer network and information technology equipment for several months, Lincoln County Administrator John O’Connell said. The county entered into an IT contract with Burgess Computers in January, which covers security, anti-virus firewalls, and data loss.
Several infrastructure upgrades were identified prior to entering into the contract with Burgess, O’Connell said. Previously, the county planned to spread out work on those upgrades throughout the calendar year. Due to the megacode virus, completion of those infrastructure upgrades has accelerated.
Approximately $28,000 of new cable and hardware is being installed, O’Connell said. “This virus certainly got our attention,” O’Connell said, “but we were on our way [to upgrading the system] anyway.”
