The South African Police Service (SAPS) website was hacked on Friday, resulting in numerous whistleblowers’ private information being exposed.
The technique used by the hackers in question was a “data dump”, which means the information housed by the SAPS website was extracted and put onto a website, which is accessible to the public.
The data dump resulted in the exposure of telephone numbers, identity numbers and email addresses of some 16,000 South Africans who had reported crimes, lodged a complaint or posted a tip-off on the SAPS website between 2005 and the present.
Furthermore, the usernames and passwords of approximately 40 SAPS officials were also compromised.
According to eNCA, a message by the hacker, “Domainer V2”, was sent via Twitter, informing the public they had breached the security of the SAPS in honour of the 34 miners killed at Marikana in August last year.
Message to SAP – Shooting of 34 protesting miners outside Marikana platinum mine.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandr… We Have NOT forgotton #EXPECTUS
—Domainer V2 (@DomainerAnon) May 16, 2013
The hacker then sent another message to the SAPS via Twitter, essentially telling the police they were not doing their jobs properly:
A message to SAP: You are responsible for the data you hold…. we have merely shown that you do not live up to your own Code of Conduct!
—Domainer V2 (@DomainerAnon) May 21, 2013
The police were alerted by news channel eNCA on Monday about the security breach, however, SAPS spokesperson Phuti Setati told them: “Our site is in order – we have not been hi-jacked. There’s no such – our website is operating normal, we don’t have a problem with our website and they never experienced any problems.”
When the news channel downloaded the list, which had been posted online, it informed Setati, who declined to comment.
