City Power, which provides electricity to the City of Johannesburg, has been hit by a ransomware virus that has crippled its systems.
The company said in a series of tweets on Thursday morning that it was the victim of a “ransomware virus” that “encrypted our databases, applications and network”.
It said its IT department is “cleaning and rebuilding all impacted applications”.
“Customers may not be able to visit our website and may not be able to buy electricity units until our ICT department has sorted the matter out,” it said.
The utility provider encouraged users to log faults on its mobile website, citypower.mobi, which apparently was not affected by the malware.
It warned that due to the attack, customers “may not be able to upload invoices when making payments”.
“The virus has attacked City Power’s database and other software, impacting most of our applications and networks,” it added. “The virus has affected our customers’ ability to vend — that is, buying electricity, uploading invoices or accessing our website. It may also affect our response to some outages as the system to order and despatch material is affected.” — (c) 2019 NewsCentral Media
- This is a developing story