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ABILENE, Texas — The City of Abilene was impacted by a cyber attack April 18 that caused multiple city departments to be taken offline.
RELATED | Russian group ‘Qilin’ claims Abilene data breach, demands ransom by May 27
According to a Comparitech article, a Russian-based ransomware group known as Qilin claims to have stolen 477 gigabytes of data from the City of Abilene.
Qilin is demanding a ransom to be paid by the city by May 27.
RELATED | Abilene community concerned about cyber attack as city announces they will not pay ransom
The City said in a statement they have been working with cyber security professionals and have been given advice not to pay the ransom.
We are able to acknowledge the Comparitech article dated May 19, 2025 in regards to the cyber incident and demands made by the ransomware group, Qilin. The City of Abilene has been working with cyber security professionals since the incident began on April 18th and, given their expert direction along with adherence to the City’s organizational values and standards, determined the payment of any kind of ransom to criminal entities of this sort would not take place. At this time the City is still limited in its ability to comment on the incident as the investigation continues and discovery efforts follow. The City of Abilene understands various aspects of functionality across several departments and services has been affected by the network outage that followed the cyber incident, and we sincerely apologize for the frustration and disruption this has caused. Our employees are working diligently to serve our community, with all essential needs like emergency response, water, and solid waste continuing operations throughout this time. We greatly appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding. As stated previously, we look forward to sharing more information on the cyber incident as soon as the investigation concludes and we are able to do so.
KTXS will be speaking with one of the nation’s leading experts on cybersecurity, Sai Huda, the CEO of CyberCatch and will update this article with more information as it is available.
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