Hackers Claim to Have Breached Dallas County Government

(TNS) — Dallas County may be the latest victim in a string of local cyber attacks after a ransomware group claimed on the dark web over the weekend that it has obtained county information.

County officials said Monday that they became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” on Oct. 19, but they have not released details.

“We immediately took steps to contain the incident and engaged an external cybersecurity firm to conduct a comprehensive forensic investigation,” County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins said in a statement.

The statement said that the county has put in place stringent security protocols and is working with cybersecurity specialists and law enforcement to address the situation. Citing an ongoing investigation, it did not elaborate on the incident. Lewis Jenkins’ office declined to comment further.

Commissioner John Wiley Price said that the county knew about the alleged attack before the ransomware group posted on the dark web. Price said that the county is not validating the claim that this group infiltrated the county’s system but rather investigating whether a breach occurred.

“We just know that it’s a claim,” he said in an interview. “We’re not validating any claim at this time.”

The Dallas Police Department sent an internal email on Monday cautioning employees to not log into the law enforcement portal shared with Dallas County, upload or download evidence or open attachments or links from Dallas County email addresses.

District Attorney John Creuzot said that the incident could impede attorneys’ and prosecutors’ ability to upload documents to court cases.

“If there is a larger a problem, I haven’t been informed of it, and nobody in my office told me that they were impaired in their ability to do their work,” Creuzot said in an interview.

Cyber experts have posted on X, formerly Twitter, screenshots from the dark web of a cyber hacking group claiming to have information from Dallas County. The screenshots say the hackers created the post Oct. 28.

Brett Callow, a cyber threat analyst with cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, said that, while these hackers typically are criminals and…