The hackers who perpetrated the alleged ransomware attack against the City of Dallas stole roughly 1.2 terabytes of data, the equivalent of 819,000 files, according to City officials.
The City’s Chief Information Officer Bill Zielinski told The Dallas Morning News that hackers obtained access to 230 City servers, nearly 1,000 computers, and more than 1,100 workstations. The City took 100 of its servers offline following the attack.
“As part of the remediation and restoration activity, every server, workstation and other host device was thoroughly reviewed for potential impact,” Zielinski said, per the DMN.
City staff were scheduled to deliver an After Action Report of the ransomware attack to the Dallas City Council on Wednesday, but the presentation was postponed after council members debated amendments to the upcoming FY23-24 budget into the late hours of the evening.
The council briefing’s scheduled start time was 9 a.m. Council members did not adjourn until after 8 p.m.
Several amendments aimed at reducing property taxes were proposed by Council Members Cara Mendelsohn and Paul Ridley, but most of these amendments were rejected by the rest of the council. The vote on the final FY23-24 budget is set for September 20.
The ransomware presentation that would have been delivered to the council can be found here. According to the presentation, the hacker group Royal Ransomware gained access to 1.169 terabytes of City data between April 7 and May 3 this year.
Dallas officials cited the purported ransomware attack as the cause of dysfunctional City services that persisted for months. For example, the City could not provide up-to-date crime statistics until the end of July. Officials now claim City operations are 99.9% restored.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, hackers allegedly stole the personal information of more than 26,000 people, including children. The City had previously insisted that such data had not been compromised, claiming there was “no indication that data from residents, vendors, or employees has been leaked.”
However, City Manager T.C. Broadnax claims the City did a “great job” responding to the purported ransomware attack. He maintained that the City’s overall response was successful but admitted that the City’s messaging was poor.
“Could we do better? I think, from a communication standpoint, at least, what people believe we should be communicating?” he said. “I would say, yeah, we can always do better.”
The alleged attack has cost the City millions of taxpayer dollars, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.