Hacker breaches Teton County health officials’ email and targets contacts

JACKSON (WNE) — A hacker gained access to a Teton County health official’s email address and sent a credential-harvesting email to all the official’s email contacts on Aug. 12.

After receiving reports of a suspicious email, the county’s information technology department disabled the health official’s account to prevent the hacker from further “unauthorized access,” Kristen Waters, the county’s public information officer, said via a news release.

“The incident has been fully contained and remediated,” Waters said.

Phishing scams are targeting municipal government employees more frequently and pose a “serious threat” to the operation of small governments, IT Strategy wrote. Phishing scams are often a starting point for more malicious attacks, like ransomware and account takeovers.

People who may have received the phishing email received a follow-up email instructing them to delete the email. Recipients who interacted with the email should immediately report the interaction to their workplace’s IT department or email provider.

Teton County commissioners’ Monday meeting was briefly impacted by the incident. Some commissioners weren’t receiving emails, and Teton County and Prosecuting Attorney Dick Stout gave a brief presentation requesting commissioners’ approval to seek external legal assistance to respond to the incident.

This story was published on August 22, 2025.