The UK’s Leicester Metropolis Council was thrown into chaos final month when a crippling cyber assault pressured it to shut down its IT techniques and telephone strains.
The INC Ransom group perpetrated the ransomware assault, which reportedly impacted care dwelling employees and the homeless but additionally noticed at the least 1.3 terabytes of stolen knowledge printed on the darkish internet.
However the ransomware assault on Leicester Metropolis Council’s infrastructure does not cease there. As native media studies, residents have seen that some avenue lights have been continually shining, 24 hours a day, ever since.
One individual complaining was 65-year-old Roger Ewens. He was informed by the council that the ransomware assault had affected the town’s “central administration system” and had resulted on the street lights “misbehaving”.
“We’re conscious of plenty of avenue lights which are staying on throughout the day. This is because of a technical subject linked to the latest cyber assault, once we have been pressured to close down our IT techniques,” a Leicester Metropolis Council spokesperson informed the Leicester Mercury. “It means we’re at present not capable of remotely determine faults on the street lighting system. The default mode for faults is that the lights keep on to make sure that roads will not be left utterly unlit and turn into a security concern. There are a selection of steps required to resolve the issue, and we’re working by means of these as rapidly as we are able to.”
It could be tempting to counsel that the cyber assault had despatched the council’s techniques again to the darkish ages… if it wasn’t the case that it could not flip its lights off.
Maybe it’s shocking to a few of us that avenue lights could be centrally managed in any respect. Certainly all they should do is activate when it will get darkish and activate once more when the solar rises, one thing which might simply be managed by having an ambient gentle sensor?
Nevertheless, an rising variety of cities are changing ambient gentle sensors with wi-fi controllers. This permits for extra flexibility and the power to show particular person or teams of lights on and off to avoid wasting energy.
Hopefully, Leicester Metropolis Council will handle to show off its lights and proceed to get better from the entire impression of its unlucky ransomware assault in time, and supply help for any people and organisations who’ve been impacted by the info leak.
What we are able to say with some certainty is that the Inc Ransom group won’t be receiving its ransom. Even when the Leicester Metropolis Council wished to pay the ransom (it says it won’t),
The Metropolis Council says it won’t be paying any ransom. Frankly, it is broke. Even when it wished to, it could not discover the cash to pay its extortionists because it was already going through a monetary disaster.
