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Austrian federal state Carinthia was hit by the BlackCat ransomware gang, also known as ALPHV and the group demanded a $5 million to unlock the encrypted computer systems.
The attack which occurred on Tuesday caused severe operational disruption of government services, as thousands of workstations have allegedly been locked by the threat actor.
Carinthia's website and email service became offline and the administration was unable to issue new passports or traffic fines.
The cyberattack also disrupted COVID-19 tests processing and contact tracing done through the region's administrative offices.
The hackers offered to provide a working decryption tool if they pay a ransom of $5 million. However, a spokesperson of the state, Gerd Kurath, told that the attacker's demands will not be met.
There is also currently no evidence that BlackCat actually managed to steal any data from the state's systems and that the plan is to restore the machines from available backups.
Kurath said that of the 3,000 systems affected, the first ones are expected to become available soon.
BlackCat's data leak site, where the hackers publish stolen files does not show any data from Carinthia.
The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware gang is one of the most sophisticated ransomware operations. They are a rebrand of the DarkSide/BlackMatter gang responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack last year.
