The City of Dallas is still unable to provide reliable crime data to the public more than five weeks after its servers were allegedly hit with a ransomware attack.
Dallas Police Department spokesperson Kristin Lowman recently confirmed to The Dallas Express that the City’s crime analytics dashboard is not reflecting accurate, up-to-date statistics. The dashboard says it is updated as of June 13, but Lowman warned that the data available would be incomplete and therefore unreliable.
While most public-facing City services have returned to normal operations, City Manager T.C. Broadnax has thus far failed to restore a few key systems — including crime statistics reporting — to their full functionality.
In a statement to The Dallas Express, the City said it is continuing to “investigate and address the cybersecurity incident that occurred on May 3.”
“We continue working diligently to restore full functionality as quickly as possible and will continue to keep the community informed with relevant updates throughout this process,” the statement said.
The City says it was hit with a ransomware attack by a cybercrime group called Royal Ransomware, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Royal threatened on May 19 to release data obtained in the breach, including contact information, social security numbers, and “thousands and thousands” of government documents.
However, the City maintains there is “no indication that data from residents, vendors, or employees has been leaked.”
While Royal made its threat almost one month ago, it has yet to publicly release any data allegedly obtained from the City.
The City has declined to say whether it paid a ransom or is negotiating with Royal to do so, but officials with the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) discourage that option.
“We don’t want to negotiate with the bad guys,” retired FBI agent and cybersecurity expert Scott Augenbaum recently told The Dallas Morning News.
“Sometimes you have no choice. You have to pay,” he said. “And that’s not where you want to be.”
However, recovery can sometimes cost even more than the ransom.
In 2019, Baltimore and New Orleans were both hit with ransomware attacks but refused to pay off the hackers. New Orleans spent $7 million of taxpayer money to recover its systems. Baltimore declined to pay a bitcoin ransom worth roughly $75,000 and subsequently spent $18 million to repair damages from the attack.
Royal Ransomware also struck the Dallas County Appraisal District (DCAD) last year, as covered by The Dallas Express.
DCAD negotiated with Royal to pay a lower ransom. While Royal initially demanded almost $1 million, the ransom DCAD paid after negotiations was $170,000 in taxpayer money.
While data after May 2 cannot be accessed by the public, figures available prior to that blackout date show a dramatic 33.85% spike in non-family murders for the first four months of 2023, according to DPD’s May 1 daily crime briefing.
No indication has been given as to when Broadnax and those under his supervision will restore public access to the latest Dallas crime data.
The Dallas Express, The People’s Paper, believes that important information about the city, such as crime rates and trends, should be easily accessible to you. Dallas has more crime per capita than hotspots like Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York, according to data from the FBI’s UCR database.
Curious to know how your area stacked up on crime? Normally, you could check out our interactive Crime Map to compare all Dallas City Council Districts, but as reliable data remain unavailable, this feature remains blank. Those interested in how we got our numbers previous to the ransomware hurdles can check out our methodology page here.
