Yesterday, a ransomware virus affected City Power Johannesburg, the electricity distributor for some parts of South Africa’s capital city. City Power notified citizens via Twitter that the virus has encrypted all its databases, applications and network and that the ICT team is trying to fix the issue.
#Update City Power has been hit by a Ransomware virus. it has encrypted all our databases, applications and network. Currently our ICT department is cleaning and rebuilding all impacted applications.^GR
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 25, 2019
Due to the attack, City Power’s website was restraining users from lodging a complaint or purchasing pre-paid electricity.
Customers may not be able to visit our website and may not be able to buy electricity units until our ICT department has sorted the matter out, Customers and stakeholders will be updated as and when new information becomes available^GR
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 25, 2019
The city municipality, owners of the City Power, tweeted, it also “affected our response time to logged calls as some of the internal systems to dispatch and order material have been slowed by the impact”. Chris Baraniuk, a freelance…
