The city of Atlanta’s computer network fell victim to a ransomware cyberattack early Thursday morning, officials confirmed.
The FBI and Homeland Security Department are investigating the cyberattack, which included a ransom note demanding money — $6,800 per computer or $51,000 for the entire system, via Bitcoin — for decryption keys, but did not say whether officials were considering payment.
“The FBI is aware of the situation and we are coordinating with the City of Atlanta to determine what happened,” an FBI spokesperson stated in an email to the Washington Examiner.
The city learned of the attack at 5:40 a.m. and released a statement on Twitter acknowledging the attack disrupted billing systems and court-related material.
Atlanta chief operating officer Richard Cox told reporters that the attack sparked an outage of various computer applications on several of the city’s department’s computer systems, but did not impact the public safety department, water department, or Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said the city was also working with external partners, including Microsoft and Cisco cybersecurity incident response teams.
While it is unclear whether personal information has been compromised, Bottoms noted that anyone who has done business with Atlanta is potentially at risk and urged businesses and consumers to monitor their bank accounts as if they’re information were compromised.