According to a , this Thursday, March 22, Hackers have attacked and blocked the access to critical computer systems of the Atlanta city government. The hackers are now demanding a ransom of $51,000 to be paid in to provide the cryptographic key that unlocks the issue.
The report said that several central governmental systems in Atlanta were invaded by hackers who then blocked the primary access systems that affected and disabled payment processing services and prevented access to courthouse information in what seems to be one of the most infamous ransomware attacks ever. In 2017, affected organizations across the world, demanding bitcoin as a ransom to unlock infected computers and ransomware has since increasingly utilized cryptocurrency.
The malicious attack was very ingenious supposedly conducted by professional hackers. Up until now, the officials investigating the issue still don’t know the full extent of the attack. Atlanta City Major, Keisha Lance Bottoms, announced the ransom attack in a press conference March 22. She said:
“We don’t know the extent or if anyone’s personal data or bank accounts will be compromised. All of us are subject to this attack.”
Meanwhile, Atlanta state officials already started to cooperate with the FBI, and other institutions such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and companies like Cisco and to find out what sort of information has been compromised and how can the infection be wiped out.
According to Richard Cox, Atlanta city COO, apparently the attack didn’t affect all services, and many are still working. Services as public safety, water, and airport operations are running with no issues whatsoever.
The Cyberattack on Atlanta
According to the problem was discovered Thursday, March 22 around 5 a.m. After finding the issue, city officials published a notification stating “currently experiencing outages on various internal and customer-facing applications, including some applications that customers use to pay bills or access court-related information.”
The situation got out of control, and the ransomware virus took control of critical systems in the city preventing officials and employees from accessing city files and applications. The attackers are asking for so that a decryption key can be provided to eliminate the virus, but experts warned that many times even if that ransom is paid, the decryption key is useless or it could be that the attackers don’t even know how to stop the attack. When this happens, the only solution is to rebuild an entire system from scratch.
Officials immediately sent out an email warning all city employees once they discovered the scenario was worse than initially thought. They were ordered to unplug their computers in case of any suspicion. The FBI is perfectly aware of the situation and working tirelessly to determine what happened and who the criminals behind the attack are.
The incident is not unique. This sort of attack has already happened in other cities as well. During December 2017, a similar attack occurred in Charlotte city, the most significant town in Mecklenburg County, N.C. Unlike other cities, officials in . On the other hand in Atlanta, officials are still trying to figure out the actual damage of the attack.
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For those that have been examining the cryptocurrency markets over the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably noticed something a bit weird about .
For the last several days, Ethereum has been depreciating in price at a greater rate than the rest of the market itself – see the picture below to get a gist of what’s going on:
Source: ; March 18
This was during day two of ’s most recent rally. As you can see above, the rest of the market made appreciable gains while Ethereum stagnated and even posted negative returns during that day.
Ethereum was the only coin in the top 20-30 that had posted negative returns during that day. Since then, it has also been the most ‘sluggish’ in terms of returns during this minor market rally.
So What’s Going On?
A popular and common theory that has arisen in the cryptocurrency community is that the price of Ethereum has depreciated so much in comparison to the rest of the crypto market because of ICOs.
As most of us know, typically take Ethereum in exchange for their projects because a great deal of them tend to build their tokens on top of the blockchain. While this is a positive thing because it shows the popularity and success of Ethereum, it also means that there are large hordes of currency being held by these developers.
So What?
So, the popular theory that has arisen in the community is that these developers are now ‘dumping’ their Ethereum as it depreciates in price in order to ensure that they can maintain enough liquidity to fund their projects.
While there are several logistical reasons for why this may not be the case, it is first important that we shell this theory out in its entirety before assessing its legitimacy.
Current ETH holdings of major ICOs. Data compiled by .
Thanks Nic 👌
— Matt Odell (@matt_odell)
If you can see the picture above, it shows a tweet posted by a user on Twitter who tracked the wallets for the largest holders of Ethereum according to their ICO fundraising totals.
Above is a closer look at the list itself. Here is the where this file was created.
If one studies the pictures posted above, the theory begins to seem plausible. After all, these teams are holding a substantial amount of ether, and it stands to logic that they will have to eventually liquidate these holdings at some point in order to gain the necessary funds to continue their project.
However, it is at this point that the theory breaks down.
Why?
For Several Reasons:
It doesn’t seem logical that teams would spontaneously dump their Ethereum because bitcoin is in a bear market. In fact, one would think that teams would horde their Ethereum more than ever because of the greater likelihood that Ethereum will soon appreciate in price once again in the near future. Ethereum was once valued at $1200/ETH. So, companies that are dumping their Ethereum stash at this point will more than likely regret this decision once they realize that the price of Ethereum will probably climb toward that point at some point in the future.
There’s no evidence of any massive selling of Ethereum beyond that of any other cryptocurrency. There has, however, been massive selling of Ethereum, so one must not discount that. But, it doesn’t seem plausible to suggest that Ethereum has been victim to a level of dumping that hasn’t been seen in any other coin.
It is possible that this theory alone, which has become very prevalent in the community over the last few days and weeks, is what is responsible for the downturn because the anticipation and expectation of other crypto investors that ICOs are dumping their Ethereum is what has kept them away from the coin, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In either case, if this is what is happening, one should expect that the will soon recover in the near future and return to form. There is nothing wrong with the protocol yet as of this point, and there are no inherent issues with Ethereum that didn’t exist when it reached it’s $1200+ valuation.
Therefore, Ethereum is one of the ‘sleeper picks’ that investors in the market should take a close look at before writing off. All signs point to the fact that it is tremendously undervalued, in the author’s opinion, in comparison to its actual usage on the blockchain.
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