The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating a cyberattack on the City of Atlanta's computer network. According to ABC News, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said that workers started to notice bizarre activity on the city's computer network at around 5:40 a.m.
"The city of Atlanta has experienced a ransomware cyber attack," confirmed Richard Cox, the city's chief operating officer. "This attack has encrypted some of the city data; however, we're still validating the extent of the compromise."
Computers under a ransomware cyber attack are usually shut down until money is exchanged, often in the form of cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. Neither Cox nor Bottoms commented on the ransom amount or if the city will agree to pay it.
Bottoms and Cox confirmed that the cyberattack negatively affected multiple internal and external apps via outages, including those used by city residents to pay bills and review court-related information. There hasn't been any evidence that suggest the city's 911 response networks, water department or Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport computer systems were affected in the attack.
"This is a very serious situation," Bottoms stated at the news conference.
Officials sent out an alert noting the city was "experiencing outages on various internal and customer-facing applications, including some applications that customers use to pay bills or access court-related information."
Bottoms strongly recommended that city employees monitor their bank accounts for any suspicious activity. "We don't know the extent, so I would ask for people to assume that you may be included," she said.
"Our information management team is working with the FBI, homeland security, also external partners from Microsoft and Cisco Cybersecurity incident response team to help resolve this issue," Bottoms added. "We have been working diligently all day long to try to come to some type of resolution."
It's believed that the attackers used tools developed by the National Security Agency, which were leaked to the public by hacker group Shadow Brokers.
