{"id":1984,"date":"2017-10-24T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gtechbooster.com\/?p=1984"},"modified":"2023-06-21T11:44:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T11:44:11","slug":"south-africa-suffers-data-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/south-africa-suffers-data-breach\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa suffers data breach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa has been hit with a data breach discovered by an Australian-based security developer Troy Hunt on Tuesday,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The database contining 23 gigabytes of data with significant details, including South Africans\u2019 13-digit ID numbers might have been online for as long as two years. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge amount of personal information which is used for purposes very often identity verification.\u201d Troy Said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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The data breach involving the personal details of an estimated 33 million South Africans has raised concerns over its use for identity theft and other criminal activity. He announced his findings in a tweet on Tuesday;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African followers: I have a very large breach titled “masterdeeds”. Names, genders, ethnicities, home ownership; looks gov, ideas?<\/p>

\u2014 Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 17, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I’ve now loaded the *email addresses only* for the South African “Master Deeds” breach into @haveibeenpwned<\/a>https:\/\/t.co\/nv5UjJpDsR<\/a><\/p>

\u2014 Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 18, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

An IP address linked to the unsecured server has been traced to a company in Midrand, but the staff there accuse another Gauteng company of being responsible for the breach. By far, while an IP address clearly links one of the parties, the firm claims the data is not theirs and a website was maliciously registered on their server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Details about children as young as three are contained in a data leak involving the records of millions of South Africans. Australian web security expert Troy Hunt tweeted that he had found the leak contained the records of millions of South Africans. The records include those of 12.4 million children and just fewer than 10 million teenagers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was pretty stunned to see that 19% of the records in there are apparently children. That\u2019s not including teenagers either \u2013 and if we add them\u201a that figure jumps to 29%\u201a\u201d Hunt wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The data includes\u201a among other details\u201a people\u2019s ID numbers\u201a ages\u201a marital status\u201a occupations\u201a estimated incomes\u201a addresses and cellphone numbers. One of South Africa\u2019s top real estate firms said it was the unwitting source of the data hacked in the largest known personal data breach in South Africa. <\/p>

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The websites of Jigsaw Holdings\u201a Aida\u201a ERA and Realty-1 were offline yesterday.\u00a0 Aida chief executive Braam de Jager said he had absolutely no idea how the information had been published on the firm\u2019s server\u201a but the matter was being investigated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the information had been bought from credit bureau Dracore in 2014 to trace potential clients who wanted to sell their houses. South Africans can do little about the leak\u201a because the data was uploaded on a server that can be accessed and downloaded if people know where to look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Basie von Solms\u201a director of the Centre for Cyber Security at the University of Johannesburg\u201a said earlier this week that South Africans were not out of the woods\u201a because Hunt and others could have made back-ups of the information. Courtesy: The Herald<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of post users could check their status at \u2018Have I Been Pwned?\u2019 website of Troy Hunt. Here is what he had to say after;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I won’t be loading the government issued IDs; these are sensitive personal identifiers that should be carefully guarded<\/p>

\u2014 Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 18, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I can’t help those who have questions around whether they were in the data set if their email address doesn’t show up in @haveibeenpwned<\/a><\/p>

\u2014 Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 18, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The breach is described as the biggest ever leak of private information in South Africa\u2019s history. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa has been hit with a data breach discovered by an Australian-based security developer Troy Hunt on Tuesday, “The database contining 23 gigabytes of data with significant details, including South Africans\u2019 13-digit ID numbers might have been online for as long as two years. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge amount of personal information which is used for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1915],"tags":[229,746,821],"class_list":["post-1984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ndocs","tag-data-breach","tag-south-africa","tag-troy-hunt"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtechbooster.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}