Nevada state offices close after wide-ranging 'network security incident'

By Raphael Satter

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The governor of the U.S. state of Nevada says that offices have closed, websites are offline and phone lines are patchy following an unspecified "network security incident."

 

In a post to X, the social media site, the office of Nevada’s Governor Joe Lombardo said that "some state websites or phone lines may be slow or briefly unavailable during recovery." 

 

Reuters was unable to reach the governor’s website, along with several other Nevada state sites, late Monday.

 

The nature of the incident wasn’t disclosed, but outages of this nature are consistent with attacks from ransom-seeking hackers, whose practice of locking up victims’ computer networks often leads to widespread disruption.

 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement that it was "actively tracking this network security incident and together with our partners, we are collaborating with the State of Nevada to offer our assistance."

 

The FBI didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment late Monday.

 

 (Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Michael Perry)