Public in the Dark After Alleged Cyber Attack

Two weeks after the City of Dallas was hit with an alleged cyber ransomware attack, the public still knows very little about what happened.

City Council members have discussed the matter in a Public Safety Committee meeting and full council meetings, including a briefing session on Wednesday, but each time the issue was raised, council members entered a closed executive session.

When asked why City officials must discuss the matter in private, public relations officer Catherine Cuellar directed The Dallas Express to an already-released statement from the City.

“This is an ongoing criminal investigation,” the statement reads. “The City cannot comment on specific details which risk impeding the investigation or exposing vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an attacker.”

The case is currently being investigated by the FBI.

“It’s still ongoing and we’re still assisting [the City],” FBI Dallas spokesperson Melinda Urbina told The Dallas Express on Thursday. “This takes quite some time.”

Urbina said the agency cannot provide details on the status of the investigation.

She clarified, however, that while the FBI is working with the City on investigating the alleged attack, the agency is not involved in the City’s efforts to restore its computer systems’ functionality.

Meanwhile, the City continues to steadily bring services back online, though it could be several weeks before its online services are back to normal.

“Given the complexity of checking, cleaning, and restoring interoperability to remaining departmental devices, systems and applications, it will likely take weeks to get back to full functionality,” the City said in a Monday update.

The City added Thursday that “311 functionality is restored including the OurDallas app and website.”

Further updates on which City services are back up and running can be found here.

As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the alleged ransomware attack has hindered the City from being able to provide accurate crime statistics to the people of Dallas.

“While police response and police services continue as usual, Dallas Police operations continue to be impacted by the outage,” Dallas Police Department Assistant Director of Media Relations Kristin Lowman told The Dallas Express.

“This includes department servers used for applications, which affects the reporting of our crime data, including online dashboards,” she said.