Southwire Company in Carrollton, Georgia. (Courtesy photo)

A Georgia wire and cable manufacturer has filed a federal lawsuit in Atlanta after its confidential business information was taken and posted online in the wake of a ransomware attack.

The redacted complaint, filed Dec. 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, said the unknown defendant demanded several million dollars to keep the information stolen from Southwire Co. private. The alleged hacker posted the confidential information online after Southwire refused to pay.

Southwire has identified a web portal associated with the December hack, which was redacted from the publicly filed complaint, but has not been able to identify the hacker's identity, according to the suit.

The suit alleges violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and trespass. It asks for a preliminary injunction barring the hacker or hackers and anyone working with them from pursuing the ransom demands and publishing sensitive corporate information online. The suit also seeks to reclaim all copies of the stolen data and an unspecified money judgment that includes disgorgement of the defendant's profits and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The case has been assigned to Judge Timothy Batten.

Southwire is represented by Marcus Christian, a partner at Mayer Brown in Washington, D.C., and associate Jonathan Klein. Christian specializes in cybersecurity and data privacy. Before joining Mayer Brown, Christian was the executive assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida and former chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch of Florida.

Klein referred all questions to Christian, who couldn't be reached for comment.

According to the lawsuit, Southwire's data was taken using Maze Ransomware, which encrypted Southwire's files, causing the company to lose access to data stored on its computer system. Although the suit redacted the dates that Southwire was hacked, the company sent a letter to customers on Dec. 11 notifying them of the Dec. 9 hack attack and warning that company operations might be impacted, according to online publication SC Media.

Attached to the suit is an email sent to Southwire saying, "We hacked your network and now all your files, documents, photos, databases and other important data are safely encrypted with reliable algorithms." The email included instructions for confirming the hack and for paying the ransom to release the files. It also identified the ransomware used as Allied Universal Maze Ransomware.

Southwire's suit redacted the amount of the ransom demanded, but media reports said the hacker demanded 850 bitcoin, or about $6 million.

Southwire's lawsuit also claims that, in addition to releasing confidential information onto a public website, the hacker publicly spread word of the hack. The hacker also set up a public website listing 27 companies that refused to pay its ransom.

Businesses, governments and law firms have frequently become a target of ransomware attacks and data breaches. A 2019 Law.com investigation found more than 100 law firms have fallen victim to data breaches that potentially exposed clients' and employees' personal and financial information over the past five years.

Last summer, hackers infected computers at Georgia's Administrative Office of the Courts, encrypting files and demanding a ransom to release them.  In 2018, after the city of Atlanta became one of more than 200 targets of ransomware attacks, a federal grand jury in New Jersey charged two Iranians with developing a form of malicious software known as SamSam, which they used to try to extract bitcoin ransoms from more than 200 hospitals, local governments and other public institutions, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

In 2016,  the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan secured the indictment of three Chinese nationals charged with hacking two major U.S. law firms believed to be Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Cravath, Swaine & Moore, the Law.com investigation found.