Young man arrested for matric marks data leak

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) has arrested a 21-year-old man in connection with the alleged leak and selling of matric results before they were officially released at midnight on Tuesday, 14 January 2025.
News that a company was selling early access to matric marks first emerged on Monday morning when basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube said her department had launched an investigation into a potential breach during a media briefing.
South Africans on social media quickly pointed out that the company in question was Edumarks, which claimed to provide matric learners with early access to their 2024 results for R99.90.
MyBroadband established that Edumarks’ registered director was a young man named Hafil Dawood.
Dawood had written to the Daily News in August 2024, saying he started Edumarks to streamline the retrieval of matric results for learners.
“Although we are a small group, we are eager to collaborate with the DBE to explore more efficient methods for accessing matric results,” he said at the time.
When news of the criminal investigation into Edumarks first broke, MyBroadband contacted Dawood for comment. However, he has not responded.
His LinkedIn page and the Edumarks website have also been deactivated or deleted.
According to the Hawks, the Department of Education laid its complaint on Sunday, 12 January, at Pretoria Central SAPS. The case was expeditiously transferred to the Hawks for further investigation.
After obtaining a search and seizure warrant, the Hawks Serious Economic Offences Unit of the Serious Commercial Crime Investigation, Cybercrime Investigation Head Office descended on a house in Hillcrest, north of Johannesburg.
“The Hawks proceeded to the identified premises where a 21-year-old young man and his parents are residing,” the law enforcement agency said in a statement on Wednesday.
“During the search, various electronic gadgets and an unlicensed shotgun with live ammunition were found,” the Hawks said.
“The 21-year-old suspect will be detained for the unlawful possession of a firearm and further investigation into the matric result leakage will continue.”

Soon after Gwarube revealed that the education department had suffered a data leak or breach, two computer science students announced that they had been investigating Edumarks since December.
Kirav Doolabh from Wits and Veer Gosai from Stellenbosch University said they had alerted the Department of Basic Education to the possible breach.
Following Gwarube’s statements, they published the findings of their investigation into Edumarks on Groundup.
Doolabh and Gosai asked the Department of Basic Education (DBE) in December to investigate the legitimacy of Edumarks. After extensive scrutiny, the department came back with its response.
“Edumarks is a bogus business offering a service it cannot deliver on,” the DBE stated.
It said that if Edumarks’ claims were true, then “they are committing fraud on multiple levels” by colluding with individuals who have unauthorised access to matric marks databases.
Doolabh and Gosai then tested the service to see if it worked. They began with a matric student from the class of 2023 and received accurate results from Edumarks.
However, they also determined that the results were from January 2024 and did not reflect final updates after remarks, which are typically released in March.
Therefore, Edumarks appears to be using results from the original matric results database sent out in January.
The pair then bought the marks of a matric from the class of 2024, which Edumarks emailed at 16:06 on 11 January 2025.
They contacted the education department, which confirmed the results were authentic.
“At the time, the department clarified that only Universities South Africa had received the marks to distribute to the country’s public and private institutions,” they reported.
Media would only receive the matric marks on the evening of 13 January 2025, the DBE said.
Universities South Africa (USAf), formerly Higher Education South Africa, is a membership organisation representing all 26 of South Africa’s public universities.
The marks were sent to USAf on 11 January 2025 at 13:10, which led Doolabh and Gosai to conclude that it or one of its member universities was the source of the leak.
Unfortunately, that means any university could have been the leak after the marks were sent to USAf.
While Dawood did not respond to MyBroadband’s questions about Edumarks, the company previously said on social media that it had contacted the DBE.
“We’re doing what our government is struggling to do. Instead of using taxpayers’ money to build a system that’s POPI compliant, they’d rather waste it on a rather pointless legal battle,” Edumarks said.
“Imagine how we felt when we tried to reach out to them to build them a better, more efficient, and POPI-compliant system, and they ignored us,” it said.
“The matric results should be free. However, we charge this once-off fee for development costs.”