Cyber ​​incident paralyzed the work of municipal services in the city of Fayetteville

Fayetteville, Arkansas’ second-largest city, was the victim of a “suspicious cyber incident” that forced the shutdown of most of the city’s digital services. The mayor and city council of Fayetteville have not yet responded to requests for comment, but the government confirmed cyberattack in a post on the city’s official website.

Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County and the largest city in western Arkansas. The population of Fayetteville is about 100 thousand inhabitants. The city is also home to the University of Arkansas, the state’s flagship institution of higher education.

“The City of Fayetteville was subjected to a suspicious cyber incident and most of the municipal services were taken offline as a preventive measure. The shutdown affects email, online payments, network applications, etc., ”the official website says.

“Police, fire department and 911 emergency services were not affected by this issue. The city’s information technology department has drawn on all available resources and is working to resolve the issue. Online services are expected to remain unavailable for at least a few days,” city officials added.

Local residents now need to pay utility bills in person at the relevant branch, and only in cash or by check. However, no one will turn off utilities for non-payment. At least as long as the city is struggling with the consequences of the cyber incident.

Keith Macedo, Fayetteville’s chief information officer, told a local news outlet that the city has hired three different cybersecurity firms to help respond to the incident.

It is worth recalling that Fayetteville is just one of many cities that have experienced service and community outages due to cyberattacks or ransomware incidents.

It took the city of Dallas, Texas almost a month to partially recover from devastating incident with ransomware. Augusta in the state of Georgia, and Auckland in California are also included in the list of major cities subjected to hacker attacks in 2023.