Atlanta Continues To Grapple With String Of Cyberattacks
Over the last several months, both Atlanta-based companies and the city have been dealing cyberattacks.
Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press
Atlanta-based companies and the city itself continue to struggle with cyberattacks.
Delta is the latest Atlanta-based company to have customer information revealed through a cyberattack. A third party chat service the airline company uses was hacked last September.
Delta officials announced Thursday; several hundreds of thousands of customers may have had their information exposed because of the attack.
But the attack Delta has to deal with is much different than the attacks on Equifax and the city of Atlanta.
Equifax announced last September; millions of customer’s personal information was exposed in a data breach.
Two weeks ago, a ransomware attack crippled Atlanta’s governmental operations. The city is still trying to get some of its computer back online.
Humayun Zafar teaches information security at Kennesaw State University.
“One is very offensive in nature,” Zafar said regarding the ransomware attack on Atlanta. “The other one is a result of an issue with a particular system which was the case with Equifax.”
Zafar said Equifax knew it had a security hole that needed to be patched up, but did nothing about it.
Hackers behind the ransomware attack against the city of Atlanta demanded payment via Bitcoin in exchange for the release of files. Zafar said he wouldn’t advise the city to pay up.
“If life was going to be impacted, literally if somebody was going to live or die because of this, then you have no choice but to pay up,” he said.
If Atlanta was a hospital and doctors weren’t able to access important patient information, Zafar said that would be a time when a payment would need to be made.
Computers at Atlanta courts are still down as of Thursday and the city hasn’t paid the ransom.
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