A FrontBurnervian who works in real estate alerted us to the fact that the site for the Dallas Central Appraisal District has been down for a couple of days. He said a call to their main number produced no explanation for the outage.
Cheryl Jordan, the always helpful DCAD director of community relations, tells me that the organization has been hacked. She says they don’t yet know whether the attack was domestic or foreign and that law enforcement is involved. Jordan says it’s going to be a few days before things are back online.
As our real estate tipster put it, “This is a huuuuge problem. All kinds of things are extracted from that website.”
This is a good reminder for everyone. If your password is, like, dcad1234, it’s time to come up with something a bit harder to crack. Also, don’t click those links in emails that offer free Walmart coupons.
UPDATE (11/11/22): DCAD has said on Facebook that it is a ransomeware attack, and the agency doesn’t plan to pay up.
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