City of Joburg says it knows who ransom hack attacker is, refuses to pay off criminals

Several hours past the payment deadline, Johannesburg has vowed not to give in to criminal hackers who demanded £29,000 (4 bitcoins) not to publish its data, four days after the South African city shut down its public sector networks in response to the breach. Several "customer facing systems – including the city's website, e- …

[Anonymous Coward]

4 bitcoins? Who are these attackers working for? Dr Evil?

On a side note they should have gone for Nigeria, their royalty is wadded.

[Anonymous South African Coward]

I won't be surprised if they had hidden either a logic bomb or some nasty payload in the system somewhere, set to trigger at a random date (or when Malema farts) and start encrypting *.* everywhere.

We don't live in Joburg, but we do keep records of our payments made to the municipality for a longish while, so if the popo should hit the fan, we will have a record of payments made.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wise move, I do the same with bank statements, bill payments and rent/council tax. They are backed up to my server with nextcloud and replicated on my computer, laptop and raid NAS with a BDXL backup every couple of months. Still keep my pron on a usb stick though.

[Paul Crawford]

"Still keep my pron on a usb stick though"

Just one USB stick? Amateur!

[Scuby]

"Back in July, Joburg electricity company City Power was infected with ransomware that prevented pre-paid meter customers from topping up online, potentially leaving locals in the dark."

To be fair, I don't think the residents of Joburg would notice they were being left in the dark, given the amount of load shedding they're subjected to on a nightly basis, thankfully they're all expert level Braaiers! (Braai = BBQ on Steroids, no flesh was charred in the preparing of their food)

[bpfh]

This looks good

They seem to be quite open about what is happening.