The City of Joburg disclosed a violation of its network and shut down all of the systems, websites, and e-services on Thursday night. The City announced on twitter a detected breach on the network, which resulted in unauthorized access to their information systems.
As reported, the shut down comes just after the City received a note of bitcoin ransom from a group named the Shadow Kill Hackers. A number of city employees were threatened by the hackers, demanding 4.0 bitcoins by October 28 at 17:00. If failed to pay the ransom, the group mentioned revealing the data of the victims on the internet.
The City further tweeted: “The incident is currently being investigated by City of Joburg cybersecurity experts, who have taken immediate and appropriate action to reinforce security measures to mitigate any potential impacts. As a result, several customer-facing systems, including the City’s website, e-services, billing system, have been shut down as a precaution.”
The City has detected a network breach in its systems ^TK pic.twitter.com/r43iiJiUya
— City of Joburg (@CityofJoburgZA) October 24, 2019
The cessation will sustain for 24 hours, and users are obstructed from performing transactions on e-services or log queries at the help center.
