The city of Atlanta, where Kentucky is playing tonight, is currently under a serious ransomware cyberattack.
Kentucky fans should use caution during their visit to Atlanta, although it sounds like only people who have done business with the city are in jeopardy:
The City of Atlanta is currently experiencing outages on various customer facing applications, including some that customers may use to pay bills or access court-related information. We will post any updates as we receive them. pic.twitter.com/kc51rojhBl
— City of Atlanta, GA (@Cityofatlanta) March 22, 2018
This post indicates that any financial transaction could be compromised:
ALERT: Anyone who has done any financial transaction within the city of Atlanta, GA are advised to immediately protect their credit and monitor their bank accounts. A massive cyberattack is in progress. The FBI and Homeland Security are in Atlanta investigating now.
— The Anon Journal (@TheAnonJournal) March 22, 2018
Here are more details:
City officials say Atlanta is dealing with a cyberattack that is holding internal systems hostage using ransomware, CBS affiliate WGCL-TV reports. Around 5 a.m., a written communication from the hackers warned that they had frozen the city’s computer systems, CBS News homeland security correspondent Jeff Pegues reports.
The attack caused outages on several computer systems. Online bill paying services and some law enforcement data was unavailable.
According to WGCL-TV, a ransom note demanding payment in the cryptocurrency bitcoin was discovered Thursday morning. The letter states that all files had been encrypted, and require a key to regain access.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tells CBS News the city is receiving assistance from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Microsoft and Cisco Security.
“We are aware of the situation and have offered our technical expertise and support to the city of Atlanta, as is standard practice for any of our public or private sector partners,” DHS officials said in a statement. “Information shared with the department for cybersecurity purposes is confidential, and so we defer to the city to discuss details of its networks.”
