Hackers demand ransom from town of Midland

Midland facing cyber attack The town of Midland's internal data is being held for ransom by hackers. CTV Barrie's Mike Arsalides finds out what the town is doing about

Hackers are demanding a ransom in the form of digital currency after freezing the town of Midland’s vulnerable and valuable financial processing systems.

On Tuesday the town confirmed they were the latest victim of a cyber-attack.

Back in May, Wasaga Beach paid a ransom of $250,000 to hackers who froze their internal systems.  That ransom was also requested in bitcoin.

“The good news with what happened is we’ve been able to recover most of those systems now and the ones we haven’t been able to recover we can augment with paper, so we are able to process the business-end of town,” said Midland Mayor Gord McKay of this latest cyber-attack.

The town has hired an insurance company along with hacking experts to deal with the cyber thieves.

“Unfortunately it occurred,” said Midland CAO John Skorobohacz.  “The good news is we do have an insurance policy in place that allows us to recover from this process.”

The Ontario Privacy Commissioner is investigating if the privacy of residents and town information was breached.