AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF) – The city of Augusta released a statement saying that recent media reports from other outlets that the city of Augusta is being held hostage for $50 million in a ransomware attack are false.

The city of Augusta sent out letter saying that those reports are incorrect.

The city of Augusta states:

Augusta’s Information Technology Department continues to work diligently to investigate the incident, to confirm its impact on our systems, and to restore full functionality to our systems as soon as possible. We continue to investigate what, if any, sensitive data may have been impacted or accessed.

Danielle Hayes, Public Information Manager, Office Of The Mayor

Augusta Commissioners held a closed door meeting at 2 P.M. on Friday in commission chambers, again, to discuss the topic of “Cybersecurity”.

Several Cyber security news sites are reporting that the notorious ransomware group BlackByte posted a claim that the city of Augusta is its latest victim and that it has seized 10 Gigabytes of city data.

But in a prepared statement the mayor said BlackByte nor anyone else has contacted the city about paying up.

“At this time we’re not in communication with this group, as we continue to work diligently to restore full functionality to our systems as soon as possible and determine if any sensitive data has been impacted. No ransom demand amount has been communicated with this city, no ransom amount has been communicated to the city of Augusta,” said Mayor Johnson.

As we first reported Tuesday, the FBI has confirmed its assisting Augusta and investigating the cyber attack, the Special Agent of the Augusta office did go into the city legal session for about an hour with another agent presumably, since those sessions are closed to update city leaders on the investigation.