City Power in Johannesburg hit by ransomware attack
City Power in Johannesburg spokesperson Isaac Mangena said the virus had attacked its database and other software, impacting on most of its applications and networks.
This meant that scores of Johannesburg residents were unable to buy electrical power units, or feeding (selling) electrical power back into the grid, which some residents are producing from solar panels.
City Power admitted to getting infected in a series of tweets sent via it’s official Twitter account.
#Update City Power has been hit by a Ransomware virus. it has encrypted all our databases, applications and network. Currently our ICT department is cleaning and rebuilding all impacted applications.^GR
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 25, 2019
City Power is owned by the City of Johannesburg. The company also said the ransomware has made it more difficult to respond to outages at the same speeds as in the past, due to a lack of access to internal applications.
At the time of us writing this story their main website is still down.
Duncan is a technology professional with over 20 years experience of working in various IT roles. He has a interest in cyber security, and has a wide range of other skills in radio, electronics and telecommunications.