La Salle County staff was warned to be vigilant about emails

The Friday before a weekend ransomware attack hit La Salle County's computer network, County Board Chairman Jim Olson sent out an email to county staff warning them about malicious emails.

Prior to the attack, Olson, D-Seneca, said board members had been receiving emails from his county email account asking them to pick up gift cards.

"We had been getting a lot of silly emails," Olson said.

"The emails looked very real, except instead of lasallecounty.org, it had La Salle County with just one 'L.' Financial institutions got emails about opening up accounts."

After consulting the county's IT director John Haag, Olson said an email was issued to staff Feb. 21 to be more vigilant than normal with emails.

There's no evidence those emails had anything to do with the ransomware attack, Olson said. The county still is unsure what allowed hackers into its system.

"We've been told that we were hit with the most sophisticated ransomware to date," Olson said. "The ransomware we were hit with wasn't released until Thursday or Friday, so it was relatively new."