A virus repeatedly attacked the Barrington Police Department computers last weekend. 

The virus is believed to have gotten into the system attached to an email sent to the police chief by a legitimate payroll company.

“It was opened by mistake and started to look at files,” said Police Chief John LaCross. “But we have software and firewalls in place to detect viruses. A firewall picked it up and cleared it out.”

LaCross described the virus as more of a nuisance, although it had the capability of getting into the police department network and corrupting other files.

The chief said his computer was quarantined most of Monday and part of Tuesday. It’s back to normal now.

LaCross said the virus never got to the level of confidential information because of the quarantine. And there was no data lost, he said.

“Our software found it and stopped it,” he said.

The virus did force Lt. Lee Soito, who serves as the department’s IT officer, to spend about eight hours on Saturday fending off the attacks and working to repair the system.