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Lexington, Ky., Takes Systems Offline After ‘External Threat’

The city took its systems offline — including bill payment services — after identifying an external threat Friday. Emergency services and police and fire response were not affected by the outage.

Cyber attack
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(TNS) — The city of Lexington took the majority of its Internet-connected services off line on Friday after discovering an "external interference."

That means people can't pay bills online, access planning and other building-related documents or register for parks programs.

Emergency services, including 911, and police and fire response were not affected by the outage. The city's general phone line — 311 — is also still operating.

Lexingtonky.gov and all city email is still online, city officials said.

Other Kentucky cities have been hit with ransomware attacks, including Paducah and Frankfort, in recent years. Paducah paid a $30,000 ransom to hackers to regain access to its servers in February 2020.

Susan Straub, a spokeswoman for the city, said they are still investigating and don't know yet if it's a similar ransomware attack.

©2021 the Lexington Herald-Leader, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.