City of Johannesburg, a metropolitan in South Africa is said to be reigning under a cyber-attack were hackers have induced a malware into the network impacting websites, and all e-services & billing systems related to the city.
News is out that the hackers are demanding 4.0 bitcoins to be paid by Oct 28th of this year, otherwise, they are said to dump the encrypted data onto the dark web which might deteriorate the situation for the citizens by creating a compromise to their data privacy.
A hacker group dubbed as “Shadow Kill Hackers” is said to be behind the incident.
An initial probe by the law enforcement has revealed that the same group was also behind the DDoS cyber-attack which took place on several banks (like Absa and Standard Bank) early this week- giving us a thought that it was a highly coordinated cyber attack equipped with sophistication and launched by an adversary nation.
Disclosing the same via an official twitter handle, the city of Johannesburg authorities have urged the customers not to take make any transactions for the next few weeks on e-services.
In other incidents related to a ransomware cyberattack, Elgin County Police have issued a security warning to businesses operating across the region that some hacking groups where intending to encrypt their databases via malicious means.
The Elgin County OPP based on Ontario says that already a business or two were infected by the file-encrypting malware disrupting the operations for the past few days.
As the cybercrime unit of the Ontario Provisional Police (OPP) was investigating the malware incident, they issued a warning out of precaution.
