"Rural Texas Towns Report Cyberattacks That Caused One Water System to Overflow"
A hack that caused a small Texas town’s water system to overflow in January has recently been linked to a shadowy Russian hacktivist group. The attack was one of three on small towns in the rural Texas Panhandle. Local officials said the public was not in danger, and the attempts were reported to federal authorities. Mike Cypert, the city manager of Hale Center, said there were 37,000 attempts in four days to log into their firewall. He added that the attempted hack failed as the city “unplugged” the system and operated it manually. In Muleshoe, about 60 miles to the west and with a population of about 5,000, hackers caused the water system to overflow before it was shut down and taken over manually by officials. In Lockney, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Hale Center and home to around 1,500 people, cyberattackers were thwarted before they could access that town’s water system, city manager Buster Poling said. At least one of the attacks was linked to a group calling itself CyberArmyofRussia_Rebornb.