SHOPRITE FINANCIAL TRANSFER CUSTOMERS’ IDENTITY NUMBERS STOLEN

MBABANE – Hundreds of emaSwati who receive money through Shoprite’s money transfer platform have had their identity numbers and other personal information stolen.

Shoprite’s hacking had been doing the rounds on various internet platforms over the past week, and countries mostly affected have been named as Eswatini, Nambia and Zambia. The number of emaSwati who receive money through the Shoprite Financial Transfer system has been increasing over the years, evidenced by long queues within Shoprite outlets that offer such services. Ransom House, an organisation of ransomware hackers, has claimed responsibility for the attack on Shoprite, Africa’s largest retailer, according to information obtained from the tech website, techcrunch.com.

Shoprite’s Regional Manager for Eswatini, Khethani Ndlovu, confirmed knowledge of the hacking but fell short of giving full details of the incident. “I can only confirm that a few of our customers were affected by the hack, but not too many. We may be talking about people in the hundreds, not thousands,” he said. Pressed for further details, Ndlovu referred enquiries to Shoprite’s Corporate Communications Manager, Sarita Van Wyk, who is in Cape Town. Reached for comment via email, Van Wyk said the team that was well placed to communicate on the incident was Shoprite’s media wing. “Please contact our media department, they are the right people to provide the information you are looking for,” she said. An email was sent to Shoprite’s media department immediately, pursuant to Van Wyk’s response, but they had not responded at the time of compiling this article.

Questions

The questions asked related to whether Shoprite had officially informed its customers on the potential risk associated with the theft of their identities, and an outline of the exact number of customers affected. According to Tech Crunch, the information stolen from Shoprite’s database ‘included names and identity numbers, but no financial information or bank account numbers’. In a statement posted on its online platforms, Shoprite said: “An investigation was immediately launched with forensic experts and other data security professionals to establish the origin, nature and scope of this incident.”

In an interview with Newzroom Afrika, Data and Tech Expert Craig Rosewarne, said such attacks were common now all over the world. He urged Shoprite’s customers to be on the look-out for communication and transactions that may be suspicious online. “Information theft affects all of us. The worst case scenario is when such information is used for identity theft purposes and misrepresentation. People affected by this must be vigilant at everything that seems suspicious,” he said. Reports on various tech websites yesterday were to the effect that the information stolen from Shoprite’s servers was now being sold on the dark web, which is a codified network of computers accessed mostly by the hacking community.

In messages posted on Ransom House’s Telegram channel and seen by Tech Crunch, the gang, which is said to be targeting companies with weak security, claimed to have obtained 600 gigabytes of data from Shoprite. It said it collected personal data that was ‘in plain text and raw photos packed in archived files, completely unprotected’. The group also claimed to have contacted Shoprite’s management for negotiations and hinted that it will sell the data and make some of it public if the talks failed.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: