The City of Dallas is the latest local government to be targeted in a ransomware attack, bringing down city websites including the Dallas Police Department website.
In a statement on Wednesday, Dallas, the ninth-largest city in the US, confirmed that “a number of servers have been compromised with ransomware, impacting several functional areas,” and city officials are working to keep the attack contained.
“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,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson did not say how city services are affected by the attack, but according to CBS News, operators are still taking 911 calls, and dispatching officers through phone calls and radio.
City Hall and Dallas Police Department websites both show landing pages indicating the sites are down, but they do not mention the ransomware attacks.
Ransomware attacks on large cities like Dallas have become rare in recent years as larger cities are dedicating more resources to securing their systems. However, the city of Oakland was affected by a ransomware attack in February that leaked personal data about citizens and government officials to the Internet.
