Incidents in country:
7 incidents catalogued
In May 2023, the South African retailer JD Group announced a data breach affecting a number of their online assets including Bradlows, Everyshop, HiFi Corp, Incredible (Connection), Rochester, Russells, and Sleepmasters.
Threat actor N4ughtySecTU breached TransUnion South Africa using a client account secured with the password 'Password', then demanded a $15 million ransom. TransUnion confirmed millions of consumers' personal data were compromised.
A ransomware attack on South Africa's state-owned logistics firm Transnet shut down operations at Durban, Ngqura, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town container terminals, forcing the operator to declare force majeure. Durban — 60% of Southern Africa's containerised trade — reverted to paper-based clearance for cargo for a week.
A fraudster posing as a legitimate Experian client obtained the personal data of 24 million South Africans and 793,749 businesses in what became one of the largest data breaches in South African history.
In May 2018, the South African website for viewing traffic fines online known as ViewFines suffered a data breach. Over 934k records containing 778k unique email addresses were exposed and included names, phone numbers, government issued IDs and passwords stored in plain text.
In 2016, the South African cinema company Ster-Kinekor had a security flaw which leaked a large amount of customer data via an enumeration vulnerability in the API of their old website.
In September 2016, the new eThekwini eServices website in South Africa was launched with a number of security holes that lead to the leak of over 98k residents' personal information and utility bills across 82k unique email addresses.