MISSOURI CITY, Texas – Nearly two months ago on March 17, KPRC 2 reported on the Fort Bend County Libraries system experiencing a “cybersecurity incident” resulting in a shutdown of nearly all computers in its system.
In the aftermath of this shutdown, KPRC 2 made a public information records request using keywords including, “hackers,” “disruption” and “attack.”
The county does not want to turn over records and they claim there is good reason. However, Fort Bend residents still have questions into what’s really going on.
“Why would someone want to do that to disrupt the library system?” asked Janet Dawson, a member of the Fort Bend County Advisory Board.
On Monday, 2 Investigates saw computers shut down and be placed off limits at two locations.
We started asking for records tied to shutdown weeks ago. The county recently made it clear in a letter to the Texas Attorney General that they don’t want to turn records over because it relates to an active county investigation “into a potential cyber-attack”.
As a result of the letter, KPRC 2 has now identified and confirmed the involvement of the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office into the investigation of the cybersecurity incident.
“We were notified of a potential crime of an alleged security breach with the library’s computer system,” said Wesley Wittig with the county’s DA’s office.
Wittig made it clear that these types of investigations “can be very complex,” because in crimes involving computers the real challenge is to identify “your actor, your bad actor.”
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Janet Dawson has spent the last three years on the library systems advisory board. Minutes after checking out a book she made it clear to us that from everything she has seen a solution appears to be nowhere in sight.
“I don’t even know if they know. I know they would like it ASAP,” said Dawson.
There is one library that the county is involved with that has not been impacted: the library the county shares with the University of Houston-Sugar Land.
That library operates under a different computer system than other county libraries and UH officials told 2 Investigates their system has not been affected.
