Texas border city declares state of emergency after cyberattack on government systems

The government of Mission, Texas, filed a state of emergency declaration this week after a cyberattack exposed all of the data held on city systems.

The city government notified residents of the incident on Wednesday, telling them cybercriminals targeted portions of their network. The attack required them to take systems offline but officials said emergency services were still operational. 

A local news outlet disputed this assessment, writing that police officers have lost the ability to run license plates and driver’s licenses through state databases. City leaders sent a memo to government workers on Tuesday warning that much of the IT system was shut down due to the incident. 

Located on the border with Mexico, the city of more than 87,000 is one of the largest in Hidalgo County.

Mayor Norie Gonzalez Garza sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday urging him to declare a more expansive state of emergency for the city while she filed a local state of disaster declaration herself. 

“The City of Mission, Texas, has suffered a cybersecurity incident such that the entire City computer server is at severe risk of a cyberattack that could release protected personal information, protected health information, civil and criminal records, and/or any and all other data held by the City of Mission and all departments within the City,” she told Abbott.

“I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that extraordinary measures must be taken to alleviate the immeasurable and imminent cybersecurity incident.”

Garza said in the letter the state-level declaration would allow for emergency funds to be released to help deal with the incident. 

In the attached local disaster declaration, Garza and City Secretary Anna Carrillo said the attack began on February 28th and that “extraordinary measures must be taken to alleviate the immeasurable cybersecurity incident.” 

Officials at the Texas Division of Emergency Management did not respond to requests for comment and the Department of Information Resources referred a request to the city of Mission.  

The city has not provided an update on the situation since Wednesday and did not respond to requests for comment. In a notice on Wednesday, they said that law enforcement had been contacted and an investigation was continuing. 

In the last six months, Texas municipalities have been hit repeatedly by ransomware attacks that have stifled city systems and limited access to everything from hospitals to energy utilities and oil giants. 

Matagorda County, about four hours away from Mission, recently made its own disaster declaration following a cyberattack in January. The Texas cities of McKinney, Coppell and Richardson have all announced cyberattacks over the last year, impacting government services for hundreds of thousands of people.