{"id":654147,"date":"2026-06-17T17:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=654147"},"modified":"2026-06-17T17:04:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:04:49","slug":"district-known-as-the-cradle-of-democracy-whose-government-has-the-worst-cybersecurity-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/654147-district-known-as-the-cradle-of-democracy-whose-government-has-the-worst-cybersecurity-in-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"District known as the cradle of democracy whose government has the worst cybersecurity in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Amathole District Municipality in the Eastern Cape is allegedly running a server with 353 known security vulnerabilities, 94 of which are “critical” and easily exploitable by cybercriminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the worst-performing government network in the country in terms of cybersecurity, a researcher recently discovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amathole, which means “the calves of the Drakensberg” in isiXhosa, is a municipal district in the central coastal portion of the Eastern Cape province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name is a reference to the pastoral life of the Xhosa communities that long settled in the area, whose cattle would graze in the nearby foothills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also known as the “cradle of South Africa’s democracy” and is home to Fort Hare University and Lovedale College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are institutions that produced leaders such as former President Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, the father of the Black Consciousness movement, and former President Thabo Mbeki.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has a population of over 1.66 million, and surrounds the Buffalo City Municipality, which includes KuGompo City (East London). The district enjoys proximity to the Sunshine Coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popular named beaches in the district include Nahoon Beach, Gonubie Beach, and Orient Beach, which offer clean sand, clear water, and low daily visitor numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are also several game reserves in the province, including Camdeboo National Park, Mpongo Private Game Reserve, Inkwenkwezi Private Game Reserve, and Mountain Zebra National Park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is one of the poorest of South Africa’s municipalities, with a severe lack of basic services for large portions of the population, where a leading cause of child mortality is diarrheal diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The district comprises large parts of the former Ciskei and Transkei homeland areas, and has six local municipalities under its jurisdiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) said in 2020 that the district was a niche area for rural-urban agriculture markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also noted that although the area is prone to drought, it has potential for grazing and forestry, with arable land for crop farming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hosts<\/th>Total CVEs<\/th>Critical<\/th>Operator<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
admcitizen.amathole.gov.za<\/td>353<\/td>94<\/td>Amathole District Municipality (Azure)<\/td><\/tr>
witzenberg.gov.za<\/td>347<\/td>94<\/td>Witzenberg Municipality<\/td><\/tr>
mail.tclm.gov.za<\/td>268<\/td>60<\/td>Thaba Chweu Local Municipality<\/td><\/tr>
dalrrd.gov.za<\/td>152<\/td>37<\/td>DALRRD \/ Agric. Res. Council<\/td><\/tr>
nda.gov.za<\/td>153<\/td>23<\/td>National Development Agency<\/td><\/tr>
midvaal.gov.za<\/td>151<\/td>19<\/td>Midvaal Municipality (Vodacom)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div>
Worst-performing government websites in terms of cybersecurity. First published by GroundUp<\/a>. Authors: Joel Cedras and Nathan Geffen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Amathole’s systems are highly vulnerable to “ghosts”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cybersecurity researcher Joel Cedras revealed his findings from an investigation into widespread cybersecurity vulnerabilities in government in a report on Ground Up<\/a> earlier in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that the Amathole District Municipality’s particular server was exposed to 75% of all critical vulnerabilities across all .gov.za domains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cedras said the server had the most total Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) across the government’s Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CVEs provide a standardised way for cybersecurity professionals to refer to publicly known vulnerabilities in software and hardware, making them easier to address.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CVEs are ranked by severity and may also be classified according to whether threat actors are actively exploiting them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only municipality that matched Amathole in critical vulnerabilities on its domain was the Witzenberg Municipality in the Western Cape. However, Amathole still had it beat in sheer numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the online tool Cedras used to identify vulnerable government domains, Shodan, the most critical CVE affecting Amathole is CVE-2015-0235.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is known as the “GHOST Vulnerability” and is ranked 10\/10 in terms of severity. An attacker who exploits this issue can gain complete control over the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most damning part of his discovery was that a patch for the vulnerability is available. In fact, the fix was released in January 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cedras told MyBroadband that the risk posed by these poorly secured government networks is that they host residents’ private information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There is a serious risk of leaking of sensitive data, which can facilitate fraud and other crimes against citizens,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A ransomware attack could also shut down multiple government services at once, and could lead to citizens not being able to access important services.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More pictures of the Amathole District Municipality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most poorly secured government network in South Africa belongs to the Amathole District Municipality in the Eastern Cape which has 94 “critical” vulnerabilities in a single server, some as old as from 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":654161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[105885,1441,15227,44384,105914,96073,2630,105915,5624],"class_list":["post-654147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-amathole-district-municipality","tag-cybercrime","tag-cybersecurity","tag-eastern-cape","tag-ghost-vulnerability","tag-joel-cedras","tag-nelson-mandela","tag-steve-biko","tag-thabo-mbeki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654147"}],"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\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654147"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654343,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654147\/revisions\/654343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}