The payroll, village accounting systems, they were all locked up,” Mayor Terry Leonard said.
Other agencies across the country have also dealt with the malicious software known as ransom ware.
In Maine this year, Lincoln County sheriff’s office computers were infected and held hostage. Sheriff Todd Brackett said after several attempts to retrieve the records, his agency paid a ransom of about $300 and the FBI helped track the payment to a Swiss bank account but failed to identify the hackers.
In suburban Chicago, the Midlothian village police paid a $500 ransom in bitcoin, a digital currency that’s virtually untraceable, to get its files unencrypted.