Hackers claim R175 million looted through fraudulent grant beneficiary accounts

[Hanno Labuschagne]

Hackers claim R175 million looted through fraudulent grant beneficiary accounts

On Tuesday, GroundUp reported that the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) will suspend payments of the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant to fraudulent beneficiaries.


We decided to investigate how seriously Sassa is addressing the issue. We obtained a sample of 2,400 applications that we know to be fraudulent.

[GroundUp]

 

[PCWARITM]

"Following our report, Me&you Mobile stopped offering eSIMs online."

Now this is what I love about you guys. Kudos. Security research articles are the best.

 

[Bliksis]

"Following our report, Me&you Mobile stopped offering eSIMs online."

Now this is what I love about you guys. Kudos. Security research articles are the best.

All good, just not 5 per day about the same thing

 

[pstation]

"Following our report, Me&you Mobile stopped offering eSIMs online."

Now this is what I love about you guys. Kudos. Security research articles are the best.

I haven't actually seen any evidence ever that this fraud was ever linked to sim cards from me & you, though. In every literally every neighborhood in SA, no matter how rich or poor, there is a nearby shop where you can buy stacks of pre-rica'd sim card for just R5 a pop.

If you are doing this type of fraud on such a massive scale, you probably wouldn't want to use esims at all. The admin work of registering and activating every esim card doesnt make sense when there are much faster and hassle free alternatives.

 

[now05ster]

Sassa also needs to make sure its verification system is up and easy-to-use. At the time of writing it was down.

 

[mpdjhb]

Phew - another rewrite of a tired old story.
Was getting worried I may need to read new news.

 

[The Worker]

So, since MyBB is pushing this so hard, will the government investigate the hackers? Have them extradited to SA to stand trial? I mean, they seriously will not sit back and accept that hackers simply defrauded them of hundreds of millions, will they?

 

[PCWARITM]

I haven't actually seen any evidence ever that this fraud was ever linked to sim cards from me & you, though. In every literally every neighborhood in SA, no matter how rich or poor, there is a nearby shop where you can buy stacks of pre-rica'd sim card for just R5 a pop.

If you are doing this type of fraud on such a massive scale, you probably wouldn't want to use esims at all. The admin work of registering and activating every esim card doesnt make sense when there are much faster and hassle free alternatives.

Unrica’d sims are old news though.