The street lights in Leicester City cannot be turned off due to a cyber attack

A cyber attack on Leicester City Council resulted in certain street lights remaining illuminated all day and severely impacted the council’s operations

The Leicester City Council suffered a cyber attack that severely impacted the authority’s services in March and led to the leak of confidential documents. The ransomware group behind the attack leaked multiple documents, including rent statements and applications to buy council houses. The attack occurred on March 7 and crippled the city council’s IT systems.

Some lights have been stuck in all day due to the cyber attack and the council is unable to turn them off.

“Beaumont Leys resident Roger Ewens, 65, noticed the street lights in his road were on constantly and asked the city council why. He was surprised when he received a reply blaming the cyber attack for affecting the “central management system” and leading to the streetlights “misbehaving”.” reported the website LeicesterLive.

The issue with street lighting should be fully resolved by the end of next week.

“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.” said a city council spokesperson. “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.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Leicester City)