The City of Johannesburg Becomes a Victim of Bitcoin Ransom

The city of Johannesburg in South Africa, also known as Joburg experienced a very serious cyberattack on Thursday, October 24th, with the hackers demanding a ransom of 4 Bitcoins in order to not publish all of the information gathered from the city’s databases.

The attack has rendered the city’s tech inner working completely stale as authorities decided to shut down everything for the next 24 hours before all of the information is secured and compiled. The hackers have put forward an ultimatum to the city, saying that they’ve gathered information on almost every password for the mayor’s office as well as personal information of a large chunk of the population including their financial accounts.

The ultimatum was that if 4 Bitcoins are not transacted before October 28th at 17:00, they will release all of the information on the internet, thus damning a large chunk of the population to having their accounts easily accessed.

The city of Joburg has already released an official Tweet informing the population that their technicians are already hands-on with the issue and are trying to prevent any more information from leaking. But the question remains if the hackers truly have stolen all of the information, and whether or not all of this is just a bluff.