In early July a virus hit the Moretown town office computer, but luckily nothing was taken and they only had to pay for backups.
The virus came through an email that was disguised as a message from the United States Postal Service. Moretown town clerk Cherilyn Brown opened the message and said that the town’s computer system caught it.
“It wasn’t going to delete the files, but it was changing them and renaming them so it made it so that we would have to pay them,” to get the right configuration back.
Although the town did not have to pay the scam artists, they did have to pay $900 to Butternut Systems and the New England Municipal Resource Center (NEMRC).
“NEMRC, who does the financial software, they had to do something to back up all of our financial files. So they had to restore them,” town administrator Cheryl Brown said.
Butternut Systems backed up and restored the town’s email server.
Moretown was not the only victim of the virus. The state of Vermont, Vermont Law School and Central Vermont Medical Center all received the same email and the virus affected their computer systems.
