By Alicia B. Hill

Alicia.hill@lagrangenews.com

 Melanie Ruberti

Melanie.ruberti@lagrangenews.com

LaGRANGE – Law enforcement officials are trying to determine who hacked into the Troup County computer system and is effectively holding it “hostage.”

The hack is affecting all county computers including systems within the Troup County Sheriff’s Office and the Troup County District Attorney’s office.

During the initial investigation, Troup County Manager Tod Tentler told the Daily News, “a virus affected all county computers.”

The source of the “virus” has not been identified, but Tentler stated the outage was no accident.

“We know that it was intentional,” he said. “… We are doing everything we can to get it back up by Monday. That is the goal.”

Troup County Sheriff deputies are using “old school” methods to handle police reports and people being booked into the jail.

“We’re having to go back and use pen and paper to handle tickets and arrests,” stated TCSO Chief Deputy Jon Whitney. “All the computers and servers went down and it’s compromised … this (situation) proves you can’t just rely on technology and you can’t throw away that stuff, like hand written reports. You have to keep it, just in case.”

Whitney stated he believed the computer system would be down through Friday – and possibly through the weekend.

“It’s going to be a lot of work for our IT department, once everything gets back up and running,” he added.

According to Tentler, any late payments caused by the computer system disruption will not be charged late fees for payments that would have been due on Friday.

We will continue to monitor the situation and bring you the latest information on our website, Facebook page and in the weekend edition of the LaGrange Daily News.

Contact the LaGrange Daily News at 706-884-7311.