El Paso not among over 20 Texas cities targeted by hacker attacks

El Paso was not one of the 22 Texas cities targeted by a coordinated ransomware attack that took place last week, a city official told ABC-7 late Tuesday.

Meantime, the Texas Department of Information Resources made the announcement earlier Tuesday that those cities who were targeted have now recovered and are operating normally. It also lowered the number of cities that were attacked from 23 to 22.

A department spokesman declined to provide more detail other than to say that authorities believe all the attacks originated from a single source.

The state has not identified the other affected cities, provided information about the attacker’s demands or said whether any of the communities paid a ransom.

The FBI and other federal agencies are now involved in the investigation.

Cities around the country have been targeted by ransomware attacks in recent years, including Atlanta and Baltimore, where city officials refused a demand for $76,000 in bitcoin to restore access to its computer network.

Several Florida cities in June paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to hackers who took over their computer operations.