FORT WORTH, Texas — The City of Fort Worth says data from an internal information system has been posted online.
In an news release sent Saturday afternoon, the city says its information technology solutions department was made aware Friday of a claim the city's website had been hacked.
Working with vendors, the city says staff determined data posted online had comer from an internal information system, not the city website.
The city provided an update and answered questions regarding the data breach during a meeting Saturday afternoon. You can watch that update here:
Kevin Gunn, City of Fort Worth IT Solutions Director, said in the briefing that the information gathered by hackers was "not sensitive in nature" and was the type of information the city would release through Public Information Act requests.
Some of the examples of the type of information hacked were work orders in the city system, which include photographs, spreadsheets and emails between staff. An example Gunn gave was photos of a pothole that needed repairs or sidewalk and street repairs and the supplementing documentation for those work orders.
Gunn said the hackers were able to gain access to the information through stolen login information of the city system. He said they do not know how they were able to get the credentials used to gain access to the city system.
This comes nearly two months after the City of Dallas suffered a ransomware attack which caused much of the city's computer network to go dark.
The City of Fort Worth's IT team said after Dallas' ransomware attack that they were all hands on deck.
"We block about a quarter million emails each day as potential threats to our computing systems," Fort Worth Chief Technology Officer Kevin Gunn said at the time. "We see people trying to access our computer systems over the Internet thousands of times each hour."
Gunn said there has not been a ransom demanded from the City.
"Other than what they've stated in their posting, their motivation for downloading this information and posting it on the Internet ... their posting eludes to basically embarrassing the city of Fort Worth and making a political statement," Gunn said. "So that's all I can really gather and surmise about what their motivation is."
Fort Worth IT employees said the motive stems from legislation passed by state lawmakers. Texas recently joined 17 other states in creating laws to prevent trans-youth from accessing gender care.
In a Facebook post, the alleged hackers stated, “We have decided to make a message toward the U.S. government. It just happens to be one of the largest states banning gender affirming care, and for that we have made Texas our target.”
“They're posting alludes to basically embarrassing the city of Fort Worth and making a political statement,” said Gunn.
The city was made aware of the post late Friday afternoon, when a state computer incident response team contacted them.
This is a developing story, please check back for updates.