Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 20-10-2017

A cyber security expert has told Radio Islam the data breach that has gripped South Africa is shockingly wide and contains much more personal information of people than anticipated.

The country suffered its biggest data breach in history with about 30-million identity numbers and other personal and financial information being hacked and leaked on the Internet.

Troy Hunt a Microsoft regional director and a Microsoft most valuable professional for developer security uncovered the hack and alerted South African to the breach.

The data dump of about 27 gigabytes contained a wide range of sensitive information, including people’s 13-digit ID numbers, personal income, age, employment history, company directorships, race group, marital status, occupation, employer and previous addresses.

Basie Solms, Director of the Centre for Cyber Security at the University of Johannesburg information says information entered by consumers in cyberspace run the risk of the data being hacked.

“Whether you entrust information to your bank, to your retail store or the travel company, you trust that company will keep it safe, that company puts its somewhere in cyberspace and the fact is cyberspace is maybe one of the most unsafe ‘wild west’ environments that man has ever created.”

Solms says while there hasn’t been any reports of identity theft, fraud or theft, the database is vulnerable.

“Be extremely aware in the next couple of months for suspicious e-mails, suspicious telephone calls, because they are now going to use this information to try to trick you into clicking on some links. So it’s this indirect type of identity theft that’s going to happen because of this leak.”

He says while the Hawks Cybersecurity unit is investigating the hack, government is hugely to blame for the breach because it has been procrastinating for years in the implementation of the Protection of Personal Information act (POPPI) which would’ve allowed authorities to act against the perpetrators.

Twitter: @FaizelPatel143