The City of Johannesburg said no to a group of cybercriminals who are demanding leaders cough up a crypto ransom in the amount of four Bitcoin worth approximately $37,471 in exchange for 'captured' data.

The extortionists, known as the Shadow Kill Hackers, gave the city until Monday at 17:00 local time to pay up.

According to the city's Twitter account, government officials were forced to shut down several systems, including the city's website, e-services and billing, to prevent further access and damage to sensitive data.

"I can confirm that the city will not concede to their demands and we are confident that we will be able to restore the systems to full functionality", said city council member Funzela Ngobeni.

Ngobeni said that the city has made significant progress in bringing systems online and that it should be able to restore 80% of all its systems.

He added that the city has been able to restore its critical customer-facing systems including billing, the property valuation system, eHealth and library services.

"In the meantime customers are advised to pay their average consumption. As systems come up, we will be phasing-in active customer services.”

City leaders are also working with IT security firms on ways to protect systems from future cyber hacks.

(Source: Business Tech)