Bottoms: Ransomware incident 'attack on all of us'

ATLANTA - Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Atlanta officials are working to repair the damages to the city's infrastructure after a cyberattack targeted the City of Atlanta computer system last week.

Hackers continue to hold Atlanta data for ransom in what Bottoms described as a hostage situation.

"This is much bigger than a ransomware attack," Bottoms said at a press conference on Monday. "This really is an attack on the government, which means its an attack on all of us."

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Officials said hackers are holding city data for ransom, and some city departments have had to shut down because of the attack. 

MORE: No evidence data compromised in attack

Mayor Bottoms described the creation of a response team once the city learned of the cyberattack last week. She said she told members of that team to pace themselves, describing the situation as a marathon rather than a sprint.

The city has hired a cybersecurity expert, Mike Cote of Secureworks, who has done an investigation into the attack. He said in the press conference that he believes he knows who is behind the attack.

Cote did not name the culprit but sources tell FOX 5 the attack came from outside the U. S. It is believed to be unlikely the bad actors would ever be caught and brought back here.

The focus, Bottoms said, is two-fold. First, she must get city services running smoothly again. Second, look at doing a complete overall.

"We know we need to do it," she said. "This has sped things up."

Meanwhile, city employees are having to perform a lot of functions manually. When the mayor was asked to estimate when services might be completely restored, she did not provide an estimate.