Ransomware Attack Strikes North Texas Municipal Water District

Hello there, me old mucker! Settle in for a bit of a chinwag about the recent cyberattacks on water authorities in the US.

Not too long ago, Aliquippa in Pennsylvania was hit by a cyber bunch aptly named the “Cyber Av3ngers”, who were allegedly backed by Iran. This bit of devilment managed to knock out the technology that handles the water supply for Raccoon and Potter townships, causing a fair bit of a tussle.

However, Aliquippa isn’t a one-off case. The North Texas Municipal Water District, or NTMWD for short, also bore the brunt of a cyberattack. Now get this, the miscreants behind this attack, the Daixin crew, bragged on their online leak site that they nabbed a whopping 33,844 files from NTMWD’s databases. That’s a Jimmy Riddle, ain’t it?

Now, these ruffians started their attack on the 11th of November and after a day, the NTMWD reported an interruption in their phone services. Savvy as they seemed, Daixin assured folk they hadn’t buggered up the water supply or its equipment.

Now, mind you, the NTMWD supplies water, treats wastewater, and even handles solid waste for about 2 million folks across 10 counties. You can imagine the chaos if the water supply was knocked off, right? When asked if they could have halted the water supply, the Daixin mob cheekily replied that perhaps they hadn’t looked hard enough. Imagine that!

Apparently, these hackers didn’t cause havoc due to their attack being detected but because they’d done their fair share of poking around and left. Curiously, they claimed to have locked down NTMWD’s business system, but not the main water supply system. Not that it’d be a consolation, mind.

Anyhow, some banter ensued between Daixin and the water district. During this, Daixin claimed that NTMWD had tried to recover their systems and ended up botching the job. There were claims made, and counters claimed with the negotiations ultimately stalling after about ten days. The Daixin fellows advised the residents of Texas to double-check their water bills, leaving us to wonder about the possible reason behind this.

NTMWD has since admitted to having detected the cyberattack and affirmed that it affected their business network. Not a whiff about whether the servers were destroyed or whether they had any usable backups. However, they did clarify that their core services like water, wastewater, and solid waste hadn’t been affected.

So, in case you’re wondering whether the personal data of residents was up for grabs, Daixin said they had a bunch of internal documents, but no resident data. Isn’t that a relief?

But regardless, it’s a right worry that two water authorities have been hit recently. None of these instances led to a full-blown emergency, but it does make one wonder: is a major disruption on the horizon? Stay tuned, mate.

by Parker Bytes