City street lights ‘misbehaved’ after ransomware attack

Leicester City Council in England was thrown into chaos last month when a serious cyber attack forced it to shut down its IT systems and phone lines.

The INC Ransom group carried out ransomware attacks that reportedly affected nursing home staff and homeless people, but also found at least 1.3 terabytes of stolen data posted on the dark web.

But ransomware attacks on Leicester City Council’s infrastructure did not stop there. According to local media reports, residents noticed that some street lights have been on 24 hours a day since then.

Roger Ewens, 65, was one of those who complained. The city council told him the ransomware attack affected the city’s “central management system” and caused streetlights to “behave erratically”.

A spokesman for Leicester City Council said: “We have noticed that many streetlights have been left on during the day. This is due to technical issues related to the recent cyber attack, when we were forced to shut down our IT systems.” Leicester Mercury. “This means we are currently unable to remotely identify faults in street lighting systems. The default mode for a fault is for the lights to remain on to ensure the road does not completely go out and become a safety hazard. There are multiple steps that need to be taken to resolve this issue and we These issues are being addressed as quickly as possible.

It would be easy to think that the cyber attack has returned the council’s system to the dark ages… if it weren’t for its inability to turn off the lights.

Perhaps some of us are surprised that street lights will be centrally controlled. Surely all they need to do is turn on when it gets dark and turn on again when the sun comes up, can this be easily managed via an ambient light sensor?

However, more and more cities are replacing ambient light sensors with wireless controllers. This provides greater flexibility and the ability to turn individual or groups of lights on and off to save power.

Hopefully Leicester City Council will be able to turn off the lights in time to continue to recover from all the effects of the unfortunate ransomware attack and provide support to any individuals and organizations affected by the data breach.

We can safely say that Inc Ransom group does not receive ransom money. Even if Leicester City Council wanted to pay the ransom (it says it won’t),

The city council said it would not pay any ransom. To be honest, it’s broken. Even if it wanted to, it would not be able to find the money to pay the extortionists because it is already facing a financial crisis.