De Wever reacts now that the city of Antwerp has disappeared from hackers’ website: “No ransom paid and no negotiations” | inland
Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA) responded on Sunday to the cyber attack that hit the city of Antwerp. “There was no negotiation, no ransom paid, not by us, not on our behalf, and by no other government in this country,” says De Wever at ‘VTM NEWS’. Saturday certainly known that the city of Antwerp disappeared was from the website of hacker collective Play. Date of deed suspecting negotiation or ransom payment.
The city of Antwerp has been a victim of a cyber attack by the hacker collective Play since December 6. This caused major disruption to the city’s services and operations. Hacker collective Play announced that the city of Antwerp had until December 19 to pay the ransom. If that doesn’t happen, the hackers threaten to publish 557 gigabytes of data, including a lot of personal data of citizens.
On Saturday, it was probably known that the city of Antwerp had disappeared from the website of hacker collective Play, which suggests that something was going on between them, or that a ransom was paid.
LOOK. The city of Antwerp is no longer on the website of hacker collective Play. According to tech journalist Kenneth Dée, this points to negotiations
Mayor Bart De Wever (N-VA) denies this on Sunday. “No negotiation, no ransom was paid, not by us, not on our behalf, and by no other government in this country,” De Wever confirmed to VTM NEWS. “I still have to be very sparing with what I say about this”, De Wever said in ‘Wakker op Zondag’ on ATV. “Soon we will strive to provide full disclosure.”
The Antwerp city council and the municipal administration disappeared for almost two weeks, very scanty with comments about the cyber attack, which still has a huge impact on (digital) services.
Effects until the end of January
In the VRT program De Zevende Dag, De Wever did not contradict the suggestion that more transparency will be offered on Monday. The mayor ruled out that the administration will work completely normally again on Monday. The city has made a list of the most critical processes with the greatest impact on citizens and those are being restored “in the initial days” first.
“We have chosen to do this in a 100 percent safe environment. We could start everything much faster, but then you are not sure that you will not run into problems again. This means that we will probably need until the end of January to work out the last of the impacts, but the biggest impact will be quickly wiped out. That will be a matter of days for people who can achieve real disadvantage.”
In between, a scan is performed of exactly which data could be in the wrong hands. “But you never know 100 percent for sure what exactly they have,” says De Wever. “We will be as transparent as possible as soon as possible, but that is with certain degrees of certainty. That makes me nervous.”
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