{"id":604071,"date":"2025-07-28T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=604071"},"modified":"2025-07-28T09:00:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T07:00:27","slug":"south-africa-under-attack-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/604071-south-africa-under-attack-2.html","title":{"rendered":"South Africa under attack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South African government infrastructure faces about 3,312 cyberattacks every week, with cybercrime costing the country roughly R2.2 billion annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is according to the Communications Risk Centre\u2019s (Comric\u2019s) Telecommunications Sector Report for 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the report also highlights cybercrime\u2019s impact on the private sector, with the average cost of a data breach reaching nearly R50 million in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comric points to ransomware attacks as the most common. These typically involve attackers encrypting the victim\u2019s data and extorting them for a decryption key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni recently highlighted the increase in cybercrime incidents<\/a>, particularly ransomware attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comric reported that approximately 78% of South African businesses experienced at least one incident in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another common type of attack is a phishing scam where criminals attempt to manipulate targets into revealing sensitive information using social engineering techniques, costing the country R200 million in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other common attacks include business email compromise, malware and exploits, and synthetic identity fraud, which has seen the most significant uptick, with attacks increasing by 153%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the rise in cybercrime, companies have begun prioritising ways of mitigating these threats above all other risks, such as environmental risks, macroeconomic volatility, and societal risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of the companies surveyed, 66% prioritised mitigating cyber risks, while half as many prioritised environmental risks and 18% emphasised dealing with macroeconomic risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given this increase in demand, Comric says the domestic cybersecurity market is expected to reach a projected revenue of R73 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the public sector, South Africa is not alone in facing this scourge of attacks; other African nations are encountering similar problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comric\u2019s report said Kenya faces 4,719 weekly attacks on government infrastructure, Nigeria 4,718, and Moroccan government organisations a whopping 8,733 attacks a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This makes the North African country one of the most targeted nations on the African continent, with the government recently facing a state-sponsored cyberattack.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

National Treasury attacked<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

South African government departments and entities have suffered several attacks in the past year. The National Treasury was the most recent victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It discovered malware<\/a> on its Infrastructure Reporting Model website, which is its online reporting and monitoring system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government department indicated that the issue was related to the recent attacks on SharePoint, a widely used web-based platform developed by Microsoft for document management and collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vulnerability that enabled these attacks let hackers access SharePoint servers and steal keys that allowed them to impersonate users or services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microsoft issued patches to fix the vulnerabilities, but researchers cautioned that hackers may have already gained access to many servers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConsidering recent media reports since Sunday regarding security incidents affecting Microsoft platforms in the US, Treasury has requested Microsoft\u2019s assistance,\u201d Treasury stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The department said it had asked Microsoft to help identify and address potential vulnerabilities within its ICT environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also said that although it found malware within one system, its other systems and websites continue to operate normally without any disruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Treasury said it processes over 200,000 emails daily and blocks around 5,800 security threats \u2013 including phishing attempts, malware infections, and spam attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days after Microsoft first confirmed a critical and actively-exploited vulnerability, Bloomberg reported that South Africa was among the most-targeted countries<\/a> in the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier in the year, the South African Weather Services was hit by a ransomware attack that took down its IT systems, including its website, emails, and aviation and marine services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other entities hit by cyberattacks in 2024 include the South African Social Security Agency and the National Health Laboratory Service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Government Pension Administration Agency and the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa also suffered cyberattacks last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African government departments are hit by thousands of cyberattacks every week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341175,"featured_media":522723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[100730,72252,801,123,100731,32440],"class_list":["post-604071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-communications-risk-centres-comric","tag-cyberattacks","tag-malware","tag-microsoft","tag-national-tresury","tag-sharepoint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604071"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604159,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604071\/revisions\/604159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}