The City of Atlanta’s Ransomware Attack Costs Keep Growing

Back in March this year the SamSam ransomware attack that took down the IT systems of City of Atlanta. It took almost a week, before the city’s computers systems came back online. Almost three months later, the effects of the original infection perpetuate and interrupt various systems. The city chose not to pay the $51,000 ransom demand. Conversely, they chose to go down restore route the systems on their own, which didn’t turn out too well after all. It has resulted in years of police dash-cam footage being lost, and exorbitant costs. According to city officials, the total costs to restore the systems would likely reach close to $10M. Hence the requested additional $9.5M to their annual budget of $35 million to fully recover their data and systems.

According to Software Testing News, law enforcement is still not able to use some of its databases, and the city’s water department is unable to take any form of payments.

At present time, there is still no ETA for complete remediation. The city has continued to state it would be inappropriate to speculate on when the matter will be fixed. However, they have reported to working 24/7 to fix all systems and are 100% committed to resolving all issues.