Virus held Vt. chamber of commerce PCs ransom for $400 – but caused $5,000 in damages

The organization ended up paying thousands of dollars to replace the infected computers, servers and backup drives, after unsuccessfully attempting to transmit a payment.

The Bennington Area Chamber of Commerce’s membership list, image folders for creating newsletters and brochures, and records concerning grants, as well as data stored on vendors attending the Bennington Car Show and the Southern Vermont Garlic and Herb Festival were maliciously encrypted by the so-called Cryptolocker ransomware.

“Confronted with a ransom demand for $400 Bitcoins, the organization attempted to pay but was foiled by a power outage that disrupted its link to the ransom gang,” Techworld reports. Cryptolocker often sets a time period for payment.

"It's like starting a brand new chamber of commerce,” chamber director Joann Erenhouse told the Bennington Banner. "It was like going back to a clay tablet and stylus, it was so frustrating."

Victims seem surprisingly willing to pay out Cryptolocker ransoms today. Perhaps people have started to view these events as simply a cost of doing business, Techworld postulates.

In addition to the chamber, a Massachusetts police department, dental practice in Bennington, Vt., and a North Carolina law firm agreed to cough up cash to hackers.

ThreatWatch is a regularly updated catalog of data breaches successfully striking every sector of the globe, as reported by journalists, researchers and the victims themselves.