LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) — Wayne County is spelunking into the dark web, shelling out up to $250,000 to Detroit law firm Clark Hill to unearth any data plundered in an October 2024 cyberattack.

The cyberattack—which the FBI still lists as an active investigation, according to The Detroit News—wiped county systems offline for several days, from jail management databases to the public website, though officials insist services are back to normal.

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Under an initial $35,000 contract approved in March and expanded to $250,000 in May, Clark Hill will comb online forums and black‑market sites for any leaked county data and advise on privacy‑law compliance, spokesperson Doda Lulgjuraj said.

Meanwhile, Wayne County’s IT crew recovered all files up through Sept. 24, 2024—capping the data loss at just over a week—and has moved core systems to Microsoft SharePoint to shore up defenses.

Clark Hill was engaged at the behest of the county’s incident response team and its insurance carrier, according to Commission documents, and sailed through a unanimous May vote with no debate.