Texas struck by two ransomware attacks in one week

Texas’ point out governing administration has been impacted by two ransomware assaults in much less than a week.

The Texas Division of Transportation (DOT) was strike with a ransomware assault previous Thursday, the DOT introduced on Friday.

“The Texas Division of Transportation decided that on May fourteen, 2020, there was unauthorized accessibility to the agency’s network in a ransomware occasion. TxDOT right away took methods to isolate the incident and shut down even more unauthorized accessibility. In addition, the company promptly began functioning with federal law enforcement,” the statement, which was posted on the department’s Facebook webpage, browse. “TxDOT is functioning carefully with the FBI to uncover the unique(s) liable and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

It is really unclear if the ransomware assault was thriving and if so, what companies have been disrupted by the assault. SearchSecurity tried to call 6 different mobile phone numbers for the Texas DOT, but none of the phone calls related. In addition, the website’s e-mail speak to variety was down at press time.

The previous Friday, the Texas courts were disrupted when the state’s Office of Courtroom Administration (OCA) was strike with ransomware that led to its network being disabled in purchase to limit distribute. In a statement on Twitter, the OCA explained it would not pay the ransom and extra that the damage from the assault was mitigated since quite a few of its IT techniques experienced a short while ago been migrated to the cloud, and individuals methods were not afflicted.

The Lone Star State is no stranger to ransomware assaults on governing administration networks. Last August, a one ransomware assault strike 22 nearby governments in Texas, which highlighted an over-all ransom need of $two.5 million.

A report by Recorded Upcoming previous yr noted that ransomware assaults on nearby and point out governments are on the increase. A extra recent report by Kaspersky noted significantly of the exact detail. Noteworthy assaults on governing administration networks around the previous numerous years include things like Colorado, Louisiana and Baltimore, amongst quite a few others. The Colorado incident was a very publicized SamSam assault that strike the state’s DOT in February 2018.