Houston suburb says some online services taken down by cyberattack

Officials in Sugar Land, Texas, said a cyberattack has impacted several online services after they reported technology outages on Thursday morning. 

The city published notices on social media and on its website saying it experienced a “cyber-event” and is working with state and federal law enforcement to investigate a breach of internal network infrastructure. 

“Critical infrastructure systems remain operational. Some online services, such as bill pay are impacted,” the city said, noting that police, fire and medical services are still available at 911. 

An alternative number was provided for all non-emergency issues. 

In a post on Thursday morning, the city said an outage was causing some services to be unavailable, including the 311 contact center, utility billing, permit and inspection scheduling, permit payments, building applications and more. 

The Houston suburb is home to nearly 110,000 people. The city did not respond to requests for comment about the nature of the cyberattack. 

Municipalities across Texas continue to face a barrage of cyberattacks in 2025. Three weeks ago, a ransomware attack forced the public school district in Uvalde to shut down for most of the week as officials attempted to restore systems. The Qilin ransomware gang took credit for the attack yesterday. 

Since a devastating ransomware attack on the city of Dallas in 2023, dozens of counties and cities in Texas have faced off against cybercriminal groups seeking to extort municipalities. 

In 2025, Matagorda County and the cities of Mission, Lubbock, and Abilene suffered cybersecurity incidents. 

Texas officials also said in June that hackers compromised an account at the Department of Transportation and downloaded almost 300,000 crash reports that included names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, license plate numbers, car insurance policy numbers and more.