MACON, Ga. — Macon-Bibb County says their phone lines are back up after an apparent cyber attack, but internet service and email are still out.
The outage caused problems for some people trying to do business with county departments — and for the departments themselves. Tuesday's county commission meeting had to be live-streamed from a cellphone instead of the usual professional broadcast equipment. That phone captured an interaction between Commissioner Virgil Watkins and Mayor Lester Miller during the meeting.
"I wanted to see if we're carving out some time to talk about the cybersecurity thing?" Watkins asked.
"No sir. We're not going to be talking about it out here. We'll be talking to you about it in just a second," Miller said before commissioners voted to go into a closed session.
All day Tuesday across the county, people saw the effects. Bibb County Superior Court said they couldn't process documents or take online payments. At the Bibb County tag office, people like Lacy Smith couldn't register their cars.
"I had to take time out of my work schedule. And luckily I had my mom to come over with my little one, too. So, a lot of moving pieces to get this work done," Smith said.
Smith says someone gave her a number to call to see when she could go back and get it done.
"Quite frustrating to say the least," she said.
Even non-county offices were affected. Anytime Bail Bonding says they're not issuing bail bonds because the Bibb County Sheriff's Office doesn't have access to certain records or email. Sheriff David Davis says people can still bond out. It's just slower than normal since they're using paper records. While Anytime won't use those, All-State Bonding says they are still issuing bonds.
Miller says other than the bond issue, the sheriff's office is largely unaffected since they're on a different server.
"The public safety is running smoothly as ever, and there is absolutely zero concern with the Board of Elections. We're just going to work through the process with our emails and our phones right now. We'll have more to say later on that, but right now, I think we're in a great place," Miller said.
Miller says they're not sure if the county is dealing with a ransom attack or other malicious act. He says they're moving forward with "extreme caution."
The county says there's no timeline for getting the network back up. They say any service that uses the county website, like park reservations and bill payments, is also down.