After $1 Million Ransom Demand, Virgin Islands Lottery Restores Operations Without Paying Hackers

The Virgin Islands Lottery restored operations after a March ransomware incident that halted activity across the territory, with the executive director, Raymond Williams, saying the system is now “90 percent back to functionality.” He noted that the bad actors demanded a $1 million ransom, which the VI Lottery refused to pay, instead choosing to rebuild the entire system from scratch and apply ongoing technical tweaks to strengthen protections.

This appears to be the second ransomware incident in a year; in January 2024 the lottery was hit, and in February 2024 the Play ransomware group claimed responsibility and added the lottery to its dark web leak site, though it is not clear whether all data was leaked.

DataBreaches[.]net asked whether the recent attack was connected to the same threat actors or incident and how access was gained, but no reply had been received by publication, and no ransomware gang appears to have claimed responsibility for the latest attack. According to the Virgin Islands Consortium, the March incident compromised the Lottery’s entire network, prompting the rebuild from scratch.