A cyber attack on a Texas government department has resulted in over 3 million people having their data compromised.
According to a listing on the website of the Texas Attorney General, the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife suffered a cyber incident, impacting 3,087,721 Texan people, making it one of the state's largest breaches for the year.
While the listing did not indicate when the incident occurred, it says that data impacted includes names, addresses, drivers license passport and other government issued ID data, dates of birth and Social Security Numbers.
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However, according to a statement by Texas Parks and Wildlife themselves, Social Security numbers, birth dates and financial information such as credit card details were not impacted by the incident.
“Texas Cyber Command recently detected a cybersecurity incident involving the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) license system vendor that handles the sale of hunting and fishing licenses,” the statement reads.
“The investigation indicates that an unauthorized actor may have obtained driver license information, passport numbers (if provided), email addresses, phone numbers and residential addresses for more than 3 million Texas hunting and fishing license customers.
“Social Security numbers, dates of birth and financial information, including credit card details were not obtained from this incident. There is no evidence that customers under the age of 18 were involved or that any specific group was targeted.”
The department says that it is currently implementing new safeguards and monitoring services, and sales of hunting and phishing licenses will remain active for August and the “next license year.
“We recognize the seriousness of this issue and have identified and implemented additional security options to better protect customer information. Many of our staff are hunters and anglers and were affected by this incident. We are committed to continuing to work with the license system vendor to implement increased safeguards to prevent future incidents,” the statement adds.
Neither the Attorney General or the department named the threat actor, nor did they provide any details of the attack vector.
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Daniel Croft
Born in the heart of Western Sydney, Daniel Croft is a passionate journalist with an understanding for and experience writing in the technology space. Having studied at Macquarie University, he joined Momentum Media in 2022, writing across a number of publications including Australian Aviation, Cyber Security Connect and Defence Connect. Outside of writing, Daniel has a keen interest in music, and spends his time playing in bands around Sydney.