Foreign hackers on Thursday made public what they say is the 250 gigabytes of internal files and data they stole from Metropolitan Police Department computers last month. The move comes after what hackers said were failed ransom negotiations to return the trove; they had initially demanded a $4 million payment, and D.C. officials were said to have offered only $100,000.

“We publish the full data of the police department, including HR, Gang Database, you will find a full range of all data in the amount of 250GB in all parts, this is an indicator of why we should pay, the police also wanted to pay us, but the amount turned out to be too small. look at this wall of shame, you have every chance of not getting there, just pay us!” wrote Babuk, the Russian hacker group that claimed responsibility for stealing the files, on their dark web site.

The hackers also said they would keep the data and files public for eight months, even if D.C. offered a larger ransom payment than the hackers were initially demanding. “[T]here is no way back you had very many chances,” they wrote.

The posted police files include documents on crimes, suspects, investigations, and copies of three months’ worth of the daily intelligence briefings given to police chief Robert Contee III. There are also extensive documents from the department’s human resources branch, including hiring initiatives, leave requests, and letters of reinstatement for officers returning to the department.

DCist/WAMU reviewed some of the leaked documents; it remains unclear just how damaging all of the material may be. D.C. officials have remained largely quiet about how they were handling discussions with the hackers and any possible ransom payments. (The only disclosures came from the hackers, who posted copies of apparent chats between the two parties over the stolen materials.) A spokesperson for the department didn’t respond to DCist/WAMU’s request for comment by publication time.

In the lead up to today’s publication of the entire trove, the hackers had released personnel files on at least 25 current and former officers, including home addresses, financial histories, Social Security numbers, and results of polygraph tests. Late last month, Contee warned officers and employees of the breach, and encouraged them to sign up for credit monitoring.

While other local governments have suffered similar ransomware attacks in recent years, cybersecurity experts say the breach D.C. faced is a new — and more problematic — variety. Instead of merely encrypting computer files and data as they did in Atlanta in 2018 and Baltimore in 2019, which prevented government employees from doing their work, Babuk stole D.C. police data and demanded a ransom payment to return it.

The sensitivity of those documents can challenge local government officials when they have to decide whether to negotiate and pay a ransom. Federal agencies and some experts say ransoms should never be paid, because it merely emboldens hackers. But other cybersecurity analysts say the possible damage to local government operations and personnel can change those considerations.

Last year, hackers stole similar sensitive personnel and student data from Fairfax County Public Schools, some of which ended up online.

“Assuming they know all the data that was stolen — and sometimes organizations don’t know what all data was stolen — they need to concentrate on taking steps to protect any sensitive data or sensitive assets that may be exposed because of this breach. Fairfax County schools had teacher data exposed, Social Security numbers, and student data exposed. And that’s really bad. And yet there haven’t been any huge repercussions from that exposed data,” says Allan Liska, a Virginia-based cybersecurity expert.

That could be the case with the police files, some of which date back as far as 2013 and could be of little current interest or relevance.