Want to hear a boring story?
I can’t submit an expense report for a recent out-of-town work trip. I’ve got all the receipts, except one from long-term parking at the Atlanta airport. A sensor lets me in and out of the parking lot there, and my account gets charged automatically. Later, I can download a receipt from a website, which I submit to accounting at my university, which creates an expense report, which eventually processes a reimbursement.
But the website has been inaccessible all week. I’m assuming it’s a consequence of the recent ransomware attack on the City of Atlanta’s computer systems. In what The New York Times has called “one of the most sustained and consequential cyberattacks ever mounted against a major American city,” a group of hackers has been holding the systems hostage for a ransom of about $51,000 (payable in Bitcoin) since late last week. To stop the spread of the attack, the city has shut down some of its online services, including some that provide consumer services. The airport’s Wi-Fi system has been disabled—and, apparently, the parking system I use there, too.
In a statement, Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, assured citizens that utility and safety systems, like police and water, are unaffected. She also noted, “This is a massive inconvenience to the city.”
Tell me about it. This is the new, humdrum reality of information-security breaches. When they don’t leak reams of personal information for theft and resale on the black market, they make ordinary life annoying in small but important ways.