Malware could have taken down St. Lucie County Sheriff records system

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — The Sheriff’s Office has been unable to process records requests since early this month due to “network issues,” the latest county-government operation to be left unable to perform critical functions because of computer issues.

Residents and others have tried unsuccessfully to get copies of important traffic crash reports that are often required for insurance claims or legal proceedings.

“The Sheriff’s Office is currently experiencing network issues,” according to a Sheriff’s Office Facebook post from Nov. 2, nearly three weeks ago. “As a result, we are unable to process public records requests at this time. This includes copies of traffic crash reports, incident reports, etc. Thank you for your patience as we work to resolve this.”

Could it have been a security breach?

In a written statement Monday, Sheriff Ken Mascara indicated that his office’s outage may have been the result of a security breach.

“We are making sure our system is clean of any malware. Unfortunately, this process takes time. We apologize for any inconvenience,” Mascara said.

In an email Monday, a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson declined to provide further updates on the outage or say whether it is related to outages the previous week at the county commissioners‘ and tax collector’s offices, the latter of which has been claimed by a notorious hacker group. Those outages, which began Oct. 27, were also initially attributed to “network issues.”

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