DALLAS — It has been three weeks since a municipal network outage impacted the City of Dallas' operations. Some people are referring to the issue as a ransomware attack.
The Dallas Municipal Court remained closed Tuesday as contractors and Information Technology specialists continued work to restore the system.
“It's been widely reported that there was quite a large hack that happened,” Scott Beck of Beck Ventures said when asked a question about the timeline of a development project, during a press conference in North Dallas on Tuesday. City leaders, including City Manager T.C. Broadnax, were present. However, none of them directly addressed remarks or questions about the cyber-attack.
“Is our personal information protected? Has that been leaked out,” asked Jim McDade, President of the Dallas Fire Fighters Association.
McDade and the Dallas Police Association President, Mike Mata, sent a letter to the Dallas City Manager and Deputy City Manager this week.
The letter said the Association and its members had concern about personal data leaks and alleged threats that information would be released by the group that recently attacked the city with ransomware.
“Nobody can give us 100% assurances that our personal data has not been leaked or stolen by this group that had the ramsomware attack on the city,” McDade explained.
In its latest update, this week, the City of Dallas said “there remains no established evidence of a data leak.”
However, police and firefighters are demanding the City of Dallas purchase identity theft protection for all their members for five years.
“The transparency through this whole thing has been questionable, at best,’ McDade said. “We've been trying to get answers. They keep saying, well we don't think so. But nobody can give me a guarantee."
City Manager T.C. Broadnax has not responded to requests for an interview or statement regarding the system outage and the concerns police and firefighters are raising.
Christos Kalantzis is CTO of SecurityScorecard. It’s an independent firm that specializes in monitoring the security posture of companies, governments and other entities. Kalantzis offered some perspective on what could possibly be happening behind the scenes in the City of Dallas.
“They're probably restoring backups, if they've had backups,” Kalantzis explained.
Cyber experts said IT professionals are likely working around the clock, trying to identify where the vulnerabilities may be.
“They clean out any malware, or viruses in their systems. Plus those leaks,” Kalantzis added.
SecurityScorecard also suggested there are multiple reasons hackers, or ransomware gangs, threaten municipalities. Among those reasons are political or financial motivation.
“Most local governments are usually running older systems. You couple older systems with very low funding, and they become a prime target for ransomware gangs, or threat actors, like we call them,” Kalantzis explained.
Still, as the municipal network outage lingers, some employees believe the City of Dallas should be doing more for its people.
“I don't think it's unreasonable, at all, to expect some form of protection,” McDade said.