Written by: Mackenzie Joiner
PHILADELPHIA, Miss. (Queen City Newsfeed) A cyberattack on a Jackson tech company has left local law enforcement without email for almost a week. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Fulton said the Neshoba County cyberattack problems began Thursday, Oct. 8.
The company is U.S.NEXT, also known as USNX. It hosts email for both the Philadelphia Police Department and the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Department.
The Neshoba Democrat first reported the outage on Oct. 12. The newspaper reported that the attack is affecting dozens of government offices across the state. County Administrator Jeff Mayo told the Democrat the county reported the problem to USNX at 7:20 a.m. on Oct. 8. The paper also said the attack knocked out the county’s website and email.
On the city side, Fulton said the email outage is “just affecting law enforcement at this time.” He said city email is not affected at this time. However, he said the city’s website is also down.
The mayor said the outage “has been a hindrance for sure to our local law enforcement officers who always do such a great job.”
Kemper County also uses the service
According to the Democrat, neighboring Kemper County also uses USNX. So do Hinds and Madison counties. The paper also reported that the company lists about 70 websites it hosts. Most belong to city or county governments.
Queen City Newsfeed left a message with Kemper County Sheriff James Moore asking for comment. He had not called back as of press time.
Sheriff calls it “a nightmare”
Neshoba County Sheriff Eric Clark said his last email came in at 3:13 a.m. last Thursday.
“My entire office has been crippled by this cyber attack,” Clark said.
Clark said his office has not been able to reach vendors by email. He said it also lost contact with the Department of Corrections about moving inmates.
In addition, Clark said the outage has blocked NCIC hit messages. NCIC is a national crime database run by the FBI. A hit is when a check shows a person may be wanted or a car may be stolen. Clark said his office also cannot share information with other agencies like it normally does.
“Imagine being a law enforcement agency without a normal means to communicate with others,” Clark said. “There is no telling what we have missed or failed to respond to in the past week. A nightmare!”
Police chief says there is no timeline yet
Philadelphia Police Chief Eric Lyons said his department uses USNX for its main email. He said sending and getting email is a big part of the department’s daily work.
“There are no current updates at this time in relation to when the service will be restored,” Lyons said.
He also said the problem started last Thursday afternoon.
“The service has been down since last Thursday afternoon and has caused significant issues retrieving emails,” Lyons said.
What the company says
USNX first posted about a network outage on the morning of Friday, Oct. 9. Later that day, the company said a cyberattack caused it. Many of its services went down, including email and websites.
USNX said it is working with the FBI and Homeland Security, according to updates on the company’s website. As a safety step, it shut off access to its services while it checks for risks. The company also said hackers did not get any client account or billing details.
In an Oct. 12 update, USNX said emails sent during the outage will likely never arrive. It told customers to ask senders to send those messages again later. At that time, the company said it did not know when email and websites would be back.
Then on Oct. 13, USNX said fixing email is now its top job. The company said it has made good progress.
What this means for you
If you emailed the police department or the sheriff’s office since Oct. 8, your message may not have gone through. So, call instead.
The city’s website is also down for now. So, call City Hall if you need city information.
Phone lines and 911 are still working.
- Philadelphia Police Department: 601.656.2131
- Neshoba County Sheriff’s Department: 601.656.1414
- Philadelphia City Hall: 601.656.3612
- In an emergency, always call 911.
USNX also talked about paying bills on government websites. That includes paying a ticket, renewing a car tag or paying taxes. The company said those tools are run by other companies and were not kept on its servers. Because of that, it said people do not need to reset passwords for them.
USNX posts updates on its website at usnx.com.
