Matric records lost

[Sinbad]

Odd, haven't seen any mention of this yet:


http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2015/01/30/matric-results-missing

The Department of Basic Education is in turmoil after its database suffered an alleged ''catastrophic'' hack attack and important information was lost.

The cyber attack was believed to have been committed by a splinter group of the hacktivist organisation Anonymous, which is said to have hacked the SA Police Service a year ago.

Several sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity and who claim to know the extent of the damage, are calling the hack "catastrophic".

By last night it was not clear if the lost data could be retrieved.

According to the insiders, the data that have gone missing include documents related to policy, tenders, research papers, personal information and matric results.

"If you need a copy of matric results from 10 years ago, they would be gone," said a source.

WTFBackups?!

 

[froot]

No backups?

Eish. ^2.

 

[LazyLion]

TISA

 

[Solitude]

I'm sorry but I can't believe that there aren't any backups. Surely.... ugh never mind. TIA.

 

[Sinbad]

Best quote of the article:

anny Myburgh, MD of Cyanre, The Computer Forensics Lab, said urban legend in the hacktivist community was that if you wanted to get into a hacking group you had to show proof of your hacks, "but the hacking of South African government websites does not get you into these groups".

 

[DanH]

So now political appointees can claim to have a matric pass and nobody can check up on them.

 

[Hemi300c]

Now all cadres and Zuma have matrics and prove them wrong.
That's all this is about.

 

[Seriously]

The crux of the matter!

If you need a copy of matric results from 10 years ago, they would be gone," said a source.

Fabricate new ones!

 

[Celine]

and what if I want a matric certificate from 1978 and the school has closed? what then huh?

 

[BlackMamba]

I van now claim lost certificate and give em higher grades wow

 

[froot]

Hmm.... there are now claims that the website was never hacked.

 

[Paul_S]

This sounds more like a server or DB crash and someone is spinning stories to sell to the press.

I tried to access the Department of Basic Education about a week ago and the website was down.
Now the web site is up although not all the content is back.
e.g. The forms to fill in if you lost your matric certificate and want it to be re-issued aren't available yet
http://www.education.gov.za/Examinations/LostCertificates/tabid/342/Default.aspx

What we should be asking is why such an important system doesn't have some sort of redundancy in place.
Even an Active-Standby setup split across two data centres with manual fail over would suffice and it's kids play to set up if you have any sort of IT skills.

 

[zizo911]

This is a catastrophye.

 

[AdrianH]

Umulusi is the organization that deals with Matric certificates when checking if a person has matriculated or not. Anything pre 1992, Umalusi goes into the paper based records in archive to check.

I don't believe the story.