On February 28th the Texas border city of Mission detected bad people doing bad things in their City computer network, announcing it on their Facebook and Instagram, subsequently requesting a state of emergency from the governor. This state of emergency allows them to suspend freedom-of-information requests, perhaps allowing them to negotiate with an attacker without it being reported.
Mission isn’t the first city to be targeted by cyber criminals, and sadly it won’t be the last.
In June 2019, the city of Edcouch reported that its systems were being held hostage by a ransomware attack in which the cyber criminals were demanding a $40,000 bitcoin payoff.
A separate, larger, incident struck Texas just a few months later: in August 2019, nearly two dozen Texas cities were the victims of a coordinated ransomware attack with a malware variant known as Sodinokibi/REvil, according to the Texas Department Information Resources.
In 2021, the U.S. Justice Department indicted a Russian national named Yevgeniy Polyanin for carrying out that attack — which at the time prompted the Governor to issue Texas’ first-ever disaster declaration due to a cybersecurity threat. Polyanin remains at large.
Texas has announced a new effort in the fight against cybersecurity threats by creating a “Texas Cyber Command center”.
https://www.govtech.com/security/mission-texas-asks-state-for-help-following-cyber-breach