33 million South Africans have their personal info leaked online.
A massive data breach has occurred in South Africa where the personal information of roughly 33 million South Africans has been leaked online. The discovery was made by Australian security researcher and creator of 'Have I Been Pwned', Troy Hunt who took to Twitter on Tuesday 17 October 2017 to reveal that he had discovered "a very large breach titled ‘masterdeeds’".
Hunt, whose website allows people to check if their personal information has been compromised in a data breach, discovered that the leak contained about 27 gigabytes of data containing 13-digit ID numbers, personal income, age, employment history, company directorships, race group, marital status, occupation, employer and previous addresses of 33 million South Africans.
It is currently unknown if the leak was the result of a hack or negligence, or which company is the source of the data. What is known is that is may just be the biggest breach of Popi (Protection of Personal Information Act) to have ever taken place in South Africa.
Here are Hunts tweets revealing the leak:
South African followers: I have a very large breach titled "masterdeeds". Names, genders, ethnicities, home ownership; looks gov, ideas?
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 17, 2017
Incidentally, the file date on this data is April 2015. It’s unclear whether it’s been exposed this entire time
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 18, 2017
Confirmed full 13 digit ID numbers (containing birth date) are present
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 17, 2017
Here are the columns in that data set, they're... extensive:
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 17, 2017
More is likely to come from this developing story as investigations have begun as to where the data originated from.
By Dean Workman
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