Illinois’ Crawford County Suffers Severe Cyber Attack
The accounting department of Crawford County, located in Robinson, Illinois, recently was victimized by cyber crime. Hackers infected the county’s servers and encrypted all of the account receivables, account payables and payroll data. After consulting with their auditing team, county officials chose to issue payroll manually. However, the accuracy of these checks is still unclear. Typically, all of the calculations for payroll are done through the encrypted systems.
The exact ransomware variant that infected Crawford County remains unknown. It is also unclear how the county plans to remediate its systems. To date, there have been no mentions of backup files or servers, nor have county officials confirmed the ransom demands.
Other Ransomware Attacks
This is not the first municipality to report a ransomware attack. In the last week alone, multiple attacks have been reported throughout the Midwest and East Coast. Including Onslow Water and Sewer Authority, the City of Muscatine, Indiana’s National Guard, the City of West Haven, and most recently, Crawford County.
For a list of ransomware attacks that have already taken place in 2018, you may click here. We have also created a map, see below, of the ransomware attacks that have taken place in the U.S.
