The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) has revealed in a report filed by the New York Times that as many as 23 individual small towns have been taken down by a single cyber attacker. In what is believed to be an act of a coordinated cyber attack, the towns in question have several government departments down and offline at the moment, increasing the overall count of ransomware attacks on US cities this year.
As of now, it is not yet clear how big of an ordeal might the new array of ransomware attacks be. Given that 23 towns have been affected by it, there is certainly the possibility of bigger sabotage at play. US federal investigation agency, FBI is believed to be coordinating with the cybersecurity department of Texas' governance in order to identify the source of the attack, thereby tracing the cyber criminal who is behind these ransom demands.
The Texas DIR is yet to publish further details on the ransomware attacks, and have so far refrained from identifying the towns affected by this cyber attack in order to prevent other threat actors from increasing the crisis. The incident is a clear example of how far cyber attacks and threats have grown in recent times, and how threat actors are gradually moving towards targeting government departments and agencies to affect critical operations.
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