Another massive ransomware attack on local government has taken place in the United States. This time, it was a coordinated effort against 23 towns in the state of Texas. We don’t know much about it right now, and frankly, that should worry us. Here’s what we do know.
How Was Texas Attacked?
The ransomware attack took place on August 16th. At the time of writing, little is known about the attack itself. The type of ransomware used has yet to be reported, and Texas officials claim that no state networks were compromised in the attack.
The ransomware struck 23 towns, but authorities were not ready to reveal anything when this news first broke. Unfortunately, that includes details such as which towns, which entities were affected and how, and whether, any ransom payments will actually be made.
Who Is Responsible for the Ransomware Attack on Texas?
Again, unfortunately, not much information had been made available when this story came out. Authorities were willing, however, to disclose that they know for certain all 23 attacks came from “a single threat actor.” It’s alarming to think an attack of this scale could have been perpetrated by a single entity.
How Many Ransomware Attacks Does This Make Now?
It’s almost getting hard to keep track of at this point. We’ve written several blogs on ransomware attacks made on local governments. To name a few, we’ve covered Albany, New York; Greenville, North Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland. We’ve also written about attacks on three Florida municipal governments, Georgia’s court system, and Georgia’s state and capitol police. We also noted that in July, the US Conference of Mayors reported that there have been 22 ransomware attacks on city, county and state governments in just the first six months of 2019.
According to data from Malwarebytes, attacks against businesses and governments are up by 365%. Meanwhile, a report from IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services shows that these attacks are continuing to rise, posing a growing threat to a wide variety of businesses that may not consider themselves an obvious target.
We don’t know what the future will hold for this type of criminal activity, but it doesn’t look good. All we know for sure is that all it takes is a single entity to bring everything to a grinding halt. And the more successful they are — and make no mistake, they’ve been extremely successful so far — the more likely they are to continue doing it on even larger scales.
Is your business prepared for such a future?
Since 1995, Manassas Park, VA-based V2 Systems has employed local systems administrators, network engineers, security consultants, help desk technicians and partnering companies to meet a wide range of clients’ IT needs, from research, to implementation, to maintenance. Concentrate on your VISION…We’ll handle the TECHNOLOGY!
