- Johannesburg's CityPower has been hit by a ransomware attack its says has encrypted all its systems – including its prepaid electricity vending system.
- Today is payday for many salaried employees.
- Those newly-paid people will be able to buy electricity again later on Thursday, CityPower says. Hopefully.
- For more stories, go to www.businessinsider.co.za.
Johannesburg agency CityPower says it hopes to have prepaid electricity available for sale again later on Thursday – hopefully.
The power supplier says it has been hit by a ransomware attack that has encrypted many of its systems.
That has left customers unable to load prepaid electricity – on a payday 25th of the month.
#Update City Power has been hit by a Ransomware virus. it has encrypted all our databases, applications and network. Currently our ICT department is cleaning and rebuilding all impacted applications.^GR
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 25, 2019
CityPower officials were not immediately available for comment, but Business Insider South Africa understands staff have been told that the most important systems are expected to be available later on Thursday.
Those phoning CityPower are treated to a similar message, though scant on detail.
"Dear customers, please note that we are currently experiencing a problem with our prepaid vending system," CityPower's current automated voice message says. "We are working on this issue and hope to have it resolved by one o'clock today".
The virus has affected our customers' ability to vend, that is buying electricity, upload invoices, or access our website.
— @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 25, 2019
It may also affect our response to some outages as the system to order and dispatch material is affected. @CityofJoburgZA
CityPower said that "most" of its systems were not available, and that this could also affect the speed of repairing physical faults. However, its mobile website for logging faults, CityPower.mobi, is still operational.
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