The university is thanking its own experts who averted what would have been a massive cyber theft.
The University of Mpumalanga has almost lost R100-million from its bank account, after a hacker gained access to it and began instructing the system to put aside the large sum.
Cyber experts at the university swiftly discovered the criminal plot just after the hacker was able to extract R3 000 from the bank account.
The attempted hack on Univ.MP’s account follows one on Transnet’s systems in July 2021 – which disrupted Transnet’s IT systems and brought a halt to its operations.
Other recent victims are the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) as well as the department of justice, which saw internal information being “dumped in the public domain”.
Univ.MP Professor David Mabunda said they have a responsibility to improve cyber security from time to time to fight “criminal networks who are continuously using sophisticated methods to execute their nefarious activities”.
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“As a council, we would like to appreciate the incredible work that was done by the university management to avert what would have been an extremely unfortunate loss,” said Mabunda.
In April 2021, debt collector company Debt-IN Consultants had consumer and personal information of more than 1.4 million South Africans illegally accessed from its servers.
“Debt-IN deeply regrets this cyber attack, and we apologise unreservedly for the inconvenience and anxiety the data breach has caused our clients and their customers.
“We are taking this matter very seriously. In this age of highly-sophisticated information security threats and an estimated 17 billion cyber attacks around the world every day, Debt-IN is committed to doing all it can to protect clients’ information,” CEO Mark Essey said.
(edited by MLM)
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