Real estate transactions in a Wisconsin’s county came to a halt following an April ransomware cyberattack that deleted the county’s network, erasing the titles needed to close on properties.
WMTV reports the attack occurred last month in the state’s Iowa County, but its impact continues to disrupt the lives of buyers, sellers and their real estate representatives whose transactions are stuck in limbo. Larry Bierke, the county’s administrator, said the attack occurred on April 28 by a “threat actor” who “intentionally deleted a significant portion of the County’s network, including backups for certain systems.”
While Bierke said the threat actor deleted some backups on the network that his office was unable to recover. “As a result, we are now engaged in a lengthy and complex process to carefully rebuild the systems and data that were destroyed,” he added.
Christina Weitzel, team lead for the RE/MAX Mineral Point office, complained that the county has been slow in remediating the damage created by the cyberattack.
“It was starting with the closings here at the end of May and middle of May that did not have title searches done, and we are like, ‘Okay where is the title commitment?’ and they were like ‘Yeah, we can’t research anything,’” she said.
Weitzel added that while her clients are patient with the county, she warned that “if this continues for more than a month there is going to be a lot of angry people out there.”
