The City of Joburg had to shut down its network including its website and e-services on Thursday night after a cyberattack on the system by a hacker group called Shadow Kill Hackers. In a tweet, the City announced it had detected a network break which resulted in unauthorised access to their information systems.
RELATED: Ubisoft Delays Four of its Biggest Upcoming Games
The attack came nearly hours after the City received a bitcoin ransom note from a group called the Shadow Kill Hackers.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#0CFF00″ class=”” size=””]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… has been shut down as a precautionary measure.” [/perfectpullquote]
The City announced the shutdown would last for 24-hours meaning customers would not be able to transact on e-services or log queries to the call centre.
As for the ransom note, it read; All your servers and data have been hacked. 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.”
The letter then demanded the payment of 4.0 bitcoins by 28 October 2019 at 17:00. Failure to do so would result in the hackers uploading all the data to the internet.
The City of Joburg hack also took place around the same time that several South African banks also reported internet issues both on their sites and apps. ABSA tweeted: “We are aware of the ongoing intermittent issues with our digital channels and our technicians are working on a fix. We will let you know as soon as that is resolved and we’re up and running again. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.”
This came right after Standard Bank tweeted; “You may be finding it difficult to log on to Internet banking and our Banking App at the moment. We’re working to sort this out.”
We will keep you updated on this cyberattack and this Shadow Kill Hackers group.
