City officials confirm that Atlanta is
dealing with a cyberattack that has locked down some internal systems and is
holding them hostage using ransomware.
UPDATE: As of
Friday afternoon EDT, the extent of the damage remains unclear. The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution reported
that Atlanta City Hall employees, when coming to work on Friday, were
receiving printed instructions that, as a precaution, they should not use their
computers. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is playing
it safe, too, in order to ensure that it remains unaffected. The world’s
busiest airport has shut down its free wi-fi network and disabled some of its
website’s functionalities.
The City of Atlanta’s computer network has
fallen victim to a ransomware attack that has encrypted some of the city’s
data, mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced at a press briefing on Thursday.
While the full extent of the compromise is
still under investigation, the attack is known to have cut off some of the
city’s online services, including “various internal and customer-facing
applications” used to pay bills or access court-related information.
In addition, the mayor encouraged the city’s
employees and anyone who had conducted transactions with the city to keep tabs
on their bank accounts in case their personal information may have been
misused.
New Atlanta Chief Operating Officer Richard
Cox, who only started in the role this week, said that several departments have been affected. The
departments responsible for public safety, water and airport services are
operating as normal, however.
Local news channel WXIA showed a screenshot of an alleged ransom message that
had been shared by a city employee. The note demands 0.8 bitcoin (roughly
$6,800) per computer or 6 bitcoin ($50,000) for keys to unlock the entire
system.
Figure: The announcement of the outages early
on Thursday (source: Twitter)
The city learned of the attack at around 5:40
am local time on Thursday, when its IT security team noticed “something that
looked peculiar” on a server and began investigating, the city’s acting
Chief Information Officer Daphne Rackley was quoted as saying.
As for whether the city would pay the ransom,
the mayor said that the city would seek guidance from federal authorities on
how to “navigate the best course of action”.