Nevada State Offices Closed After Network Security Incident, State Websites, Phones Impacted
Published
- State offices breach: Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo announced the closure of state offices due to a cyber intrusion.
- Impacted services: Nevada’s state websites, online services, and phone lines are subject to an outage.
- Historically speaking: The incident marks one of the most extensive government network outages in recent state history.
State offices closed following a significant Nevada “network security incident” that has disrupted critical government operations across the state. The cybersecurity breach has resulted in widespread closures of state offices, offline websites, and compromised telecommunications infrastructure.
Comprehensive Service Disruption
The cybersecurity disruption has rendered multiple Nevada state websites inaccessible, with Reuters confirming the governor's official website and several other state portals remain offline. The governor's office issued a statement via social media platform X, acknowledging that "some state websites or phone lines may be slow or briefly unavailable during recovery."
According to Governor Lombardo's office, the incident, which occurred on August 24, has led to cascading failures across the state's digital infrastructure, affecting only state government systems.
Telecommunications infrastructure has sustained considerable damage, with phone lines operating intermittently throughout the affected systems. The Nevada DMV, the Public Utilities Commission, the State Police and Highway Patrol dispatch phone lines, and other phone lines and online systems are reportedly among the impacted services.
Though specific technical details regarding the attack vectors remain undisclosed, the Office stated there is no evidence that personally identifiable information (PII) was compromised.
Federal Response and Investigation
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has initiated active monitoring protocols for this network security incident, stating it is "actively tracking this network security incident and together with our partners, we are collaborating with the State of Nevada to offer our assistance," according to Reuters.
While authorities have not officially attributed the incident to specific threat actors, the disruption characteristics align with ransomware attack methodologies.
In June, Salvation Army USA confirmed a data breach claimed in March by Chaos, and Qilin Ransomware claimed a Kerrville Independent School District breach.
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