Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 29-05-2018
Technology company iAfrikan says South Africans affected by the latest data breach may have recourse against the perpetrators of the leak.
A database containing close to 1 million personal records of South Africans was discovered on a public web server that belongs to a company that handles electronic traffic fine payments in the country.
According to security researcher Troy Hunt and iAfrikan Digital founder Tefo Mohapi, the information leaked online includes names, ID numbers, e-mail addresses, and passwords stored in plain text from South African citizens.
Speaking to Radio Islam, Mohapi says while many South Africans subscribe to online banking services and traffic online payments, they trust the service provider to keep their details secure.
“In terms in keeping it yourself safe, the basic checks you can do are just to make sure that the site you’re working with if it’s a payment site or financial site has a SSL certificate. So typically you’d see a padlock at the top on your browser and things like that and that it’s a reputable organisation.”
He says banks have also taken serious precautions to ensure there are no data leaks on customer’s accounts as the biggest risk is identity fraud.
“The banks have quite tight security generally speaking. So we haven’t seen really any big data leaks from banks per se. They have processes and systems in place that prevent something like this from happening to them.”
Mohapi says they are working with the Hawks Cybercrime Unit who’ve engaged the State Security Agency (SSA) in the investigation to apprehend and bring the perpetrators of the leak to book.
He says people can lay civil claims against those responsible for leaking their data once the case against them has been concluded.
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