North Carolina county's ransomware recovery will take days

A North Carolina county was working Thursday on the lengthy process of fixing its computer systems after refusing to pay off a hacker who used ransomware to freeze dozens of local government servers.

It will take days to restore Mecklenburg County's computer system, local officials said, leaving residents in North Carolina's most populous metro area facing delays or disruptions to county services. Deputies were processing jail inmates by hand and building code inspectors switched to paper records after a county employee unleashed the malicious software earlier this week by opening an email attachment.