Ransomware Cyber Attack Hits Atlanta

ATLANTA, GA — The city of Atlanta is experiencing a ransomware cyber attack, city COO Richard Cox said at a press conference early Thursday evening.

Cox said city officials were made aware of an outage of various internal customer facing applications around 5:40 a.m. Thursday. According to the city, the applications affected include some customers may use to pay bills or access court-related information.

Cox said the attack had encrypted some city but officials were still validating the extent of the compromise. Several departments have been affected by the attack but the departments of public safety, water services and airport are operating without incident.

City officials are working with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft, Cisco and other federal partners in the investigation.

Cox said the investigation would determine whether personal information has been compromised and asked all employees to take appropriate measures to make sure their data was not compromised.

Cox also said the city payroll was not affected. Authorities have not made a determination whether City Hall would be open Friday.

Patch will update this report.

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