According to new reports, a ransomware attack that took place the week beginning 1 May 2023 on the city of Dallas caused its police department website to go offline, although has had limited impact on city services for residents.

As outlined by CNN, in a statement, city officials “confirmed that a number of servers have been compromised with ransomware, impacting several functional areas.”

The report also says that officials are working to contain the spread of the malicious software and restore affected services, as there were reports of computer outages and connectivity issues at other Dallas government agencies.

CBS reported that the outage impacted the police department’s dispatch system, meaning that emergency call handlers had to manually write down instructions for responding officers, who could then only respond using phones and radios.

The report says that the hackers, a group called Royal, claim they encrypted the city’s critical data and threatened to post sensitive information online.