Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
More US towns have been hit by ransomware. Last Friday, 23 small Texas towns were affected by a coordinated ransomware attack that appears to have been pulled off by “one single threat actor,” according to the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR). A Texas DIR spokesperson told The New York Times that the majority of the targets were specific departments in the towns. In a statement to Gizmodo, the Texas DIR declined to specify which towns or departments, saying it did not want to make the “impacted entities” a target for other bad actors.
It’s not clear how these towns are dealing with the issue, but it doesn’t seem like they’re just paying up to make the problem go away. A DIR spokesperson told NPR that he was “not aware” of…