Officials: Fort Worth City website hacked, but no secure data released
FORT WORTH (CBSNewsTexas.com) - City of Fort Worth officials held a press conference Saturday on an unauthorized data leak that occurred Friday.
Chief Technology Officer and IT Solutions Director Kevin Gunn emphasized that there has been no indication, thus far, of sensitive information of residents, businesses or employees being hacked. He said no social security numbers, credit card or banking information was accessed or released.
"Obviously, we want to protect the interest of residents and businesses and the employees of the city of Fort Worth, so we'll make the decisions that are in their best interest, and we want to protect them to the extent we can," Gunn said.
The Texas Department of Human Resources notified Fort Worth officials of the website breach round 4:00 p.m. Friday after seeing a post by the hackers. In the post, the group of individuals claimed to have gained access to city data by hacking the website.
That data the hackers shared came from an internal city website used to manage maintenance work orders for Transportation and Public Works, Park and Recreation and the Property Management Department. However, Gunn says officials were able to verify the data did not come from the city's public-facing website.
The chief technology officer says the kind of data the workers released were file attachments to work orders, which includes before and after repair photos, spreadsheets, invoices for work done, emails between staff, PDF documents and other related materials.
When asked why hackers would want this information, Gunn pointed to the post the hackers made, which he said "alludes to, basically, embarrassing the city and making a political statement."
Gunn noted that the post did originate from the city's computer systems and it appears the hackers stole login information for the view work system.
City officials have removed all users from the website and forced everyone to reset their passwords. Officials are working with federal and local law enforcement, as well as computer forensic experts, to review information "to fully understand the depth and scope of this incident."