City of Johannesburg announced breach of their network

City of Johannesburg in South Africa has announced breach of their network on the night of Oct. 24, 2019. Business Day has reported that this attack comes few hours after a bitcoin ransom note was received by the Johannesburg city from a group known as Shadow Kill Hackers.

The Johannesburg city has shut down their website along with billing systems as a precautionary measure, after a group has hacked authority's system and then demanded ransom of 4 Bitcoins worth around $30,000. The City has said on their Twitter account that as a precaution - call center, cashiers as well as other digital platforms have also been taken offline after the breach.

As per a message posted on Twitter, the City of Johannesburg said that it had "detected a network breach which resulted in an unauthorised access to our information systems". The City of Johannesburg further tweeted that this incident is currently getting investigated by cyber security experts of the city, who have taken appropriate and immediate action so as to reinforce the security measures for mitigating any possible impacts. The Twitter message posted by the City added that "as a result several customer facing systems -- including the city's website, e-services and billing systems -- have been shut down as a precautionary measure". The cyber extortionists also threatened that they will upload all the hijacked data on internet, if their ransom demand of crypto-currency isn't met.

The Twitter note comes after numerous city employees have received ransom note. The ransom note reads that all the servers as well as data were hacked. The ransom note further reads that "we have dozens of back doors inside your city. We have control of everything in your city. We also compromised all passwords and sensitive data such as finance and personal population information".

Nthatisi Modingoane, the spokesman of Johannesburg city, confirmed on Oct. 26, 2019, that now some customer-service centers were already up and running, as reported by News24 on their website.

City of Johannesburg was a repeat victim of the hackers, who no less than twice in 3 months have shut down their important city services as well as networks.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/30/2019