Cryptolocker scambles US law firm's entire cache of legal files
A small US law firm has bravely admitted losing its entire cache of legal documents to the Cryptolocker Trojan despite attempting to pay the $300 (£180) ransom in a bid to have them unscrambled.
According to TV reports, Goodson's law firm in the North Carolina state capital Charlotte became the latest victim of a malware menace that was custom-written to lever ransom money from precisely this type of relatively cash-rich but time-poor firm.
The email infected a company server holding thousands of important documents after an email with a malicious attachment was mistaken for a message sent from the firm's phone answering service. That error left every single document used by firm on its main server in an encrypted state, including Word, WordPerfect and PDF files, said Goodson's owner, Paul M. Goodson.