Well, shit..I had no idea. And will be sharing that at work tomorrow.

The Vermont land records remain offline. Nearing in on a month now.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ransomware.

Well, it's been my experience that town clerks have a sixth sense about these things (docs missing from their records), but I'd say the actual burden of proof on that falls to the forensic auditors.

VT digitizing records is relatively new compared to some other states. I believe they got funding from the CARES Act to do so.

Go to the card catolog indexes. They're sorted alphabetically by grantor/grantee name. Depending on the town, they'll be current (except for any docs received/submitted for recording 12/25/22 or later).

Yup. Store manager (who was actually a great person) decided to leave shortly after that and the rest of us jumped ship with her.

Yup.

Between that and having to show up at 7am for a "loss prevention course" (see: if you take of the plastic shopping bags for your spare set of shoes, that counted as "theft"), I was not sad to see the company go under.

Couldn't agree more.

My very first job was working as a sales associate at the Gymboree flagship store in NYC.

Corporate (in CA) left alllllll employees' information unencrypted on computers that were stolen one night.

I made minimum wage; had to pay out of pocket for identity monitoring services for corporate's idiocy.

Won't argue you there.

One day during my 1st mud season, I chose the "better" way out of the driveway and, about 1/4 mile down the road, while navigating the churn - with all of 5" of ground clearance to start with - I came upon some neighbors who'd set up a couple beach chairs, a table and beers beers...who were clearly taking bets on who would (or wouldn't) make it up/down.

Still remember the guy who lost the bet. I waved.

Considering Cott Systems is based outside Columbus, OH, it's pretty safe to assume the FBI will be involved.

Crimes across state lines and cyber crime would both fall into their jurisdiction.

Town clerks print an index of grantees/grantors with the book and page where the deed/mortgage/etc. can be found.

I know the Town Clerk in Manchester used the one day the website came back up to get those indexes printed. But a lot of Town Clerks are part time and grossly understaffed so not all clerks could pull off what Anita did for Manchester.

Paralegal for a real estate law firm here.

Per my local Town Clerk, it was a Christmas Day hack. No ransomware detected, per the host sites (Cott Systems/Record Hub) Forensic audits are being run, according to title insurance companies.

If the hackers were looking for SSNs, they won't find them there. But it's not a bad place to start for stealing someone's identity.

There's been a lot of spoofing of attorney emails to facilitate wire fraud (successfully in one instance where I work). Why the client (who works in e-commerce) didn't think it odd to wire $47k to a florist in Indiana is beyond me ¯_(ツ)_/¯. But our company had to do a full forensic audit (and that took time). The FBI was involved.

I'm assuming the FBI will be involved in this much bigger hack, too.

Other towns affected:

• Pownal
• Arlington
• Shaftsbury
• Manchester
• Dorset
• Pawlet

Subaru is a company running solely on their reputation (from the 1990s).

My first car was a 2018 Impreza hatchback. 5 recalls in 4 years. 1 was for an entertainment system not available to my base model, 4 others were significant safety recalls (faulty rubber brake hoses, faulty ECM, a PCV made of such shit material it was liable to be sucked into the engine, killing it, and faulty headlights).

The headlight recall - recall #5 - was the last straw for me.

"No remedy yet available," the NHSTA recall read. Which Subaru fought.

Why? Because laziness. The headlight molds were meant to house LED bulbs. Cheap fuckers didn't consider popping a halogen in would diminish efficacy dramatically.

I commute 350 miles every week on an elevated access highway in Vermont and people couldn't see me. Terrifying.

Plus an undiagnosable driver's front brake problem and a confirmed powertrain failure code. Dumped it before I ran out of warranty.

Corporate said they'd rather wait for a wrongful death lawsuit than fix the damn car.