At a press conference on Monday morning the Mayor of Antwerp Bart De Wever (Flemish nationalist) said that there is currently no evidence that the data stolen from the city authority’s servers by the hackers’ group Play could be used to the detriment of citizens. Two weeks ago, on the night of Monday 5 December the City of Antwerp fell victim to a cyber-attack during which a large quantity of data was stolen from the city authority’s servers.
Antwerp
"No evidence that the data that has been stolen could be seriously detrimental to citizens”, says Antwerp’s Mayor
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At Monday morning’s press conference, Mr De Wever once again said that no negotiations have taken place with the cybercriminals and no ransom has been paid.
The Mayor of Antwerp said that his city’s digital and online services have been taken down during the past two weeks as a precautionary measure that he described as a "digital lockdown". He added that “The re-start could have come sooner, but we aim to work securely. Only when 100% security can be guaranteed will we put our systems back online. During the coming days many services will start up again but, based on a list of priorities, it will be several weeks before all the applications are back up again”.
Mr De Wever says that no ransom has been paid due to the nature of the data stolen by the hackers and the lack of guarantees that a ransom payment would be an end to the issue.
Also, at the press conference the CEO of Digipolis, the company that manages the City of Antwerp’s IT systems, Youri Segers said that “it’s mystery” why the City ofAntwerp has been removed from the hackers’ collective Play’s list of hacked organisations.
The data stolen by Play is reported to include documents relating to city council staff, construction plans, finance, insurance and a number of email files.