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Ransomware attack hits Dallas police and other city departments

LM Otero
/
Associated Press

UPDATED 12:26 p.m. CT Thursday, May 4, 2023

City of Dallas websites including police and fire rescue department website are down for a second day Thursday as a result of a continued outage.

The city confirmed Thursday morning that a hacker group called Royal is responsible for the service disruptions.

In March, the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI put out a joint statement warning about the hacker group and the threat to U.S. and international organizations.

The current outages come after cyber attacks on the Dallas County Central Appraisal District late last year and the Dallas Independent School District in January of last year. It's unclear if those attacks are related to the current attack on the city.

CISA referred questions to the city on Thursday.

The city’s security monitoring tools identified a likely ransomware attack early Wednesday, compromising multiple local servers and knocking the DPD website offline. The site was back up as of 2 p.m., but was knocked offline again as of Thursday afternoon.

“The City team, along with its vendors, are actively working to isolate the ransomware to prevent its spread, to remove the ransomware from infected servers, and to restore any services currently impacted,” city spokesperson Jenna Carpenter wrote in an email Wednesday.

Carpenter added that disruptions to Dallas residents should be limited, but that anyone experiencing problems accessing city services should contact 311, or for emergencies, 911.

The outages impacted DPD's computer-assisted dispatch system, known as CAD, according to a story published by CBS11 on Wednesday afternoon.

The station reported dispatch call takers had to manually write down instructions for officers in the field. Officers are only able to respond through their phones and radios.

KERA was referred to the city's Information Technology Services department. The department did not provide any further information.

Pablo Arauz Peña is the Growth and Infrastructure Reporter for KERA News.