A group of anonymous Columbus police officers and one firefighter have filed the second lawsuit against the city claiming their personal information was stolen and some suffered financial losses from bank accounts and credit cards hacked after the city was the victim of a ransomware attack.
The city workers hope for the lawsuit to become class-action, which could take in thousands of city workers seeking damages from taxpayers.
The suit not only seeks financial damages, but asks the court to compel Mayor Andrew J. Ginther to give “detailed and specific disclosure of what types of (personal information files) have been compromised,” a reference to the ongoing secrecy that encompasses the entire city government surrounding the cyber hack reported on July 18.
The lawsuit cited some of Ginther’s public statements on the event, including that the cybercriminals’ attempt at encrypting city data had been “thwarted” and that the data stolen “was corrupted or likely unusable,” both of which underplayed the severity of the attack.