This week, a suburban police department outside of Chicago paid $500 in bitcoins to an unidentified hacker for relief from Cryptoware, another bit of malware capitalizing on the growing trend of ransomware.

The Chicago Tribune reported that police in Midlothian—located south of the city—first encountered Cryptoware in January. Someone initially opened an e-mail carrying the malware, thus inviting Cryptoware into the department to access a computer. As is standard in the ransomware script, soon a message popped up demanding money in exchange for a code that could free the device from Cryptoware.

Local IT professionals assured the paper that the hacker didn't access files in the police department's system, rather the Cryptoware scheme only encrypted swaths of department computers and made certain documents inaccessible. "It didn't encrypt everything in the police department. It was just that computer and specific files," Calvin Harden Jr., an IT vendor who works with the village, told the Tribune.

The paper noted that Midlothian now joins the city of Detroit and a Tennessee's sheriff's office as Cryptoware targets within the last year. (Tennessee paid a similar ransom; Detroit refused to comply.) Neither the village's police chief nor its mayor responded to the Tribune when asked if they'd pursue the hacker further, and an FBI spokesperson wouldn't confirm if the bureau was made aware of the incident.

For Midlothian, the reach of the Cryptoware scheme ultimately led to paying upfront rather than first pursuing the hacker. "Because the backups were also infected, the option was to pay the hacker and get the files unencrypted," Harden Jr. told the paper.

As Ars reported as far back as fall 2012 , malware that takes computers hostage until users pay a ransom keeps getting meaner. And the growing prevalence of Bitcoin and other digital payment systems makes it easier for online crooks to implement such schemes with little-to-no digital footprint. While law enforcement had some success stopping or slowing various ransomware , 2.0 versions have been discovered and ransomware has even expanded to mobile devices . So whether it's CryptoLocker Cryptowall , or now Cryptoware, it's a trend unlikely to disappear anytime soon.