North Carolina's Bladen County announces a major cyber attack targeting its internal systems

Bladen County in the US state of North Carolina said it suffered a significant cyber attack that affected several County systems but did not have any impact on emergency services.

Bladen County announced in a press release on Tuesday that it identified “irregularities” in its internal systems last week and immediately launched an investigation to understand the nature and scope of the cyber attack.

“Bladen County IT staff immediately retained the services of the North Carolina Joint Cybersecurity Task Force, a team of outside experts from the NC National Guard, the NCLGISA Cybersecurity Strike Team, NC Emergency Management, and the NC Department of IT to launch a forensic investigation and help secure our Servers,” the County said.

Bladen County is North Carolina’s fourth largest county with a total land area of 875 square miles and a population of close to 30,000 people as per a 2020 census. The territory received county status in 1739 but many of its areas became part of adjacent counties in later years.

Officials at Bladen County said that after the cyber security incident was identified, the County implemented a contingency plan that helped it to run all emergency services without interruption “and at no time did any life safety services cease to operate.” The County’s IT team is working with external cyber security experts to resolve the issue and get its systems back online.

“Based on the preliminary investigation, the malicious activity performed by cybercriminals on our county network was designed to access our systems and the data contained within those systems. We can confirm the criminals were able to access some of the County’s data,” County officials added.

While most of the systems that rely on the Internet have been impacted by the incident, systems relating to state or other levels of government haven’t been impacted. Rodney Hester, the chairman of Bladen County Board of Commissioners, said that more information regarding the cyber security incident will be shared as and when available.

"We are committed to addressing the situation quickly and responsibly, by collaborating with legal counsel, technical experts, and cyber-security professionals. We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this issue," Hester said.

Earlier this year, a major ransomware attack also struck the town of Cornelius in North Carolina, affecting public services and forcing town officials to take several systems offline.

“Town of Cornelius has stabilized a potential cyber threat encountered on the evening of July 11, 2023. The threat was caused by ransomware located on a Town device and was detected early by Town staff,” the town said.

Officials from the town of Cornelius added that some services provided by the Town would remain unavailable or delayed till the town resolves the situation and restores its systems. In a statement shared with the media, communications manager for Cornelius, MaeLynn Joyner said. 

 

“Services most affected will be those delivered over the phone or those requiring staff to access files located on our servers, which are in the process of being scanned.”