Johannesburg Held to Ransom

The city of Johannesburg has shut down its entire computer network after being targeted by a Bitcoin ransomware attack. 

According to The Times, South Africa's commercial capital was hacked by a threat group called the Shadow Kill Hackers Group. The city closed down its website and all digital services on Thursday night after several employees received a ransom note from the threat group.

Shadow Kill Hackers Group are threatening to expose sensitive information by uploading it to the internet unless a ransom of 4 Bitcoins—roughly USD 34,000—is paid before 5:00 pm on October 28. 

The ransom note reads: "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."

Before imploring the city to "have a nice weekend," the threat group writes: "If you pay on time, we will destroy all the data we have, and we will send your IT a full report about how we hacked your systems and your security."

The city took to Twitter to report the breach, stating just after 11 pm that it had detected a network breach that resulted in unauthorized access to information systems. 

The city wrote: "The incident is currently being investigated by City of Joburg cyber security experts, who have taken immediate and appropriate action to reinforce security m ..

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