The City of Johannesburg shut down its website and billing systems after a group hacked into the authority’s system and demanded a ransom of four Bitcoins worth about $30,000.
The call center, cashiers and other digital platforms were also taken offline as a precaution following the breach, the City said on its Twitter account. Technical teams are working to restore services, it said.
A group called Shadow Kill Hackers advertised the hack on the city’s website before it was shut down, local broadcaster eNCA reported. The cyber extortionists then threatened to upload all hijacked data on the internet by Oct. 28 if their crypto-currency ransom isn’t met, the news agency said.
The incident is being investigated by security experts who are striving to limit the impact, the City said. The investigation will take 24 hours.
City of Johannesburg spokesman Nthatisi Modingoane confirmed Saturday that some of the customer-service centers were now up and running, News24 reported on its website. Remaining services would be brought back online by the end of the weekend [Oct.27].
Multiple banks in the country were hit by online attacks that affected public-facing services…
