Cyberattack disrupts North Carolina city services

Officials at North Carolina's City of Winston-Salem have disclosed operational disruptions impacting some of its services, including all its utility bill payment systems, following a cyberattack on Dec. 26, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

Investigation into the cause of the incident and efforts to restore impacted systems are still underway, said officials in a Dec. 30 announcement emphasizing that the cyberattack had not affected the city's emergency response services. No updates have since been provided by officials but such an intrusion was noted by Winston-Salem City Manager Pat Pate to have occurred in other cities across the state, which led the implementation of government ransom payment bans in the U.S. "Almost all the other major cities in North Carolina have been hit with an event similar to this in the past several years, some of them in the past year," said Pate in a city council meeting as reported by local news outfit WFDD.