A March cyber attack saw the city council unable to switch off street lights.
A March cyber attack is being blamed for street lights being on all day in Leicester.
After a cyber attack hit the authority's services and led to confidential documents being published online - including rent statements and applications to buy council houses.
However one local resident noticed the street lights in his road were on constantly, and the city council blamed the cyber attack for affecting the "central management system" and leading to the streetlights "misbehaving," according to media reports.
In a statement, a city council spokesperson said: “We are aware of a number of streetlights that are staying on during the day. This is due to a technical issue connected to the recent cyber attack, when we were forced to shut down our IT systems. It means we are currently not able to remotely identify faults in the street lighting system.
“The default mode for faults is that the lights stay on to ensure that roads are not left completely unlit and become a safety concern. “There are a number of steps required to resolve the problem, and we are working through these as quickly as we can.”
Written by
Dan Raywood
Senior Editor
SC Media UK
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with more than 20 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 16 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Conference, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and ESET Security Days.
Outside work, Dan enjoys supporting Tottenham Hotspur, managing mischievous cats, and sampling craft beers.
