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A major electricity supplier in South Africa's largest city [(Johannesburg)] has suffered a ransomware attack, leaving some residents without power. City Power revealed on Thursday that its IT systems had been shut down.
"It has encrypted all our databases, applications and network," the company tweeted, referring to the virus.
City Power's website remains offline and residents have reported problems via social media with their electricity supplies. The ransomware attack initially affected customers' ability to buy pre-paid electricity and also hampered the firm's efforts to respond to localised blackouts.
A spokesman for City Power told the BBC that more than a quarter of a million people might have been affected.
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Ransomware Hits Johannesburg Electricity Supply
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There's no such thing as an original sin.
-- Elvis Costello
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26 2019, @10:03PM (6 children)
There are people who will die if they go without power for too long. They tend to also have mobility issues too, since even portable oxygen equipment tends to be bulky. The last I checked, extortion is a felony, and if someone dies due to the commission of a felony the perpetrator is guilty of capital murder. So the solution is simple: Hunt down the perpetrators and execute them.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 26 2019, @11:45PM (3 children)
Blindly running and executing everything is what got us into this mess.
Isolate the perpetrators, confine them. Bury them in a sandbox if you have to. But for $deity's sake, don't execute them!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:12AM (2 children)
Citations. I suspect you don't have any idea what you're talking about, but if you can provide citations, I may reconsider.
As for blindly executing - if you keep your eyes closed, you probably won't successfully execute anyone or anything. Try opening your eyes, next time. If nothing else, it's easier to find the "Enter" key on your keyboard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:34AM
I believe what the op was referring to is our present paradigm of mixing code and data. Embedded executables.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @04:05PM
Whoosh!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gaaark on Saturday July 27 2019, @03:00AM
The solution is simpler: disconnect important computers from the internet and use a better operating system and do backups and use, you know, security even though it costs money and and and
WHAT is it going to take before people start getting intelligent thoughts?
How many stories like this will it take?
There's a song in this somewhere... but its' blowing in the wind.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @07:45AM
Energy supply in South Africa is already very unstable. There is nobody who depends on electricity supply for life support that doesn't have some kind of backup energy supply such as generators and battery backup. Literally, anybody who did would be dead