Rhysida asked for 30 bitcoin, around $1.9 million at the time of the cyberattack, as payment for the stolen data.
Two weeks after the cyberattack, Columbus mayor Andrew Ginther told the public the stolen data was likely “corrupted” and “unusable.”
The accuracy of Ginther’s statement was thrown into doubt the following day after David Leroy Ross, a cybersecurity researcher also known as Connor Goodwolf, revealed that the personal information of hundreds of thousands of Columbus residents had been listed on the dark web.