The City of Johannesburg, South Africa, which suffered a ransomware attack last week, will not pay the ransom of 4 bitcoin (over $37,000) demanded by the attackers. The threat group, calling itself the Shadow Kill Hackers, says it has obtained passwords, financial records, personal population information and other sensitive information from the city’s systems, and has threatened to release the data if no ransom is paid.
Johannesburg was given a deadline of October 28, 5 p.m. local time, but the city refused to meet the demands of the threat actors on Monday and instead announced that it will be able to restore all impacted services, which include its call center, website and e-services platform. Despite the city’s optimism, the financial impact of the attack is likely to be huge, since Johannesburg is South Africa’s main financial center and accounts for 16% of the country’s GDP.
Read more: City of Johannesburg Refuses to Pay Ransom to Hackers
