According to Mirror, UK City Council located in Tiverton has just lost two years worth of data after a town clerk, John Vanderwolfe, clicked on a malicious attachment. Vanderwolfe stated clicking on the link was a lapse in judgement. He said instead of populating the data he expected after clicking the link, it just came up as a bunch of “gobbledygook”.
The virus spread throughout the city council’s systems, successfully encrypted two year’s worth of files. The ransom demand was for $3,200 USD. The city does not plan to pay the ransom demand, but does acknowledge it will take months to restore their data. The city does not have electronic backups, but does have hard copies. Therefore, they intend to spend the next couple months re-scanning these documents back into their systems.
Luckily the financial and planning records were not impacted by the ransomware strike. The city’s website is also functioning as normal.
The best advice Vanderwolfe has for others is, if in doubt — don’t open it.
To see a full list of ransomware attacks that have taken place so far in 2017, you can click here.
