WATCH: City of Johannesburg to resolve cyberattack

AT a media briefing on October 28, the City of Johannesburg confirmed that the recent cyber attack on its ICT systems had a significant impact on their ability to deliver services to the residents.

The attack, which took place on October 24, breached the city’s network and resulted in unauthorised access to the city’s systems.

MMC for Finance responsible for group information and communications technology Councillor Funzela Ngobeni said the individuals responsible demanded to be paid four bitcoins, valued at approximately R500 000, by October 28.

“I can confirm that the city will not concede to their demands, and we are confident that we will be able to restore systems to full functionality. We have made significant progress. If we continue on this trajectory we should be able to restore 80 per cent of all our systems. We have managed to bring up some of our critical customer-facing systems from a technical perspective, such as our billing (SAP ISU and CRM), property valuation system, land information system, e-health and libraries services.

“We are also working to bring up our e-services. I acknowledge the impact of this on our customers, specifically those who have joined our environmental drive to reduce paper usage by registering to receive their statement by email,” explained Ngobeni.

In the meantime, customers are advised to pay their average consumption. As systems come up, the city will be phasing in active customer services. Thuso House in Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, is operational.

“I would like to advise our customers who want to pay to do so using alternative payments methods, such as EFT, “EasyPay outlets like Pick n Pay and Checkers, or the Post Office.

“Regrettably, the city’s call centre remains down. Engineers continue to work to resolve these matters. While I do not have an estimated time for the restoration of our call centre, we commit to keeping people updated via our social media pages,” he said.

He also mentioned that this attack is opportunistic in both its form and its timing as it coincides with all city month-end processes affecting both supplier payments and customer payments.

Building plan and town planning systems remain down. The city’s planning department will be operating on limited services. The city apologises to its residents, developers and industry partners for the interruption to their usual business operations.

“We have vowed to not rest until we have gotten to the bottom of this matter. This attack has reinforced our vigilance and our group forensic department, along with relevant state security bodies, are investigating the attack.

“We have also brought in our ICT international cyber forensic partners, who are using state-of-the-art forensic tools to get to the bottom of this matter. Our primary goal is ensuring the restoration of all our services and I want to thank Joburgers, our residents, our citizens, our partners and our suppliers for their patience during this challenging time,” he said.

Maj Gen Shadrack Sibiya said they are working with the Hawks and security agencies in the case. However, he said they cannot divulge much at this point. “We do know where the attackers come from, but we will leave everything to the authorities,” explained Sibiya.

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