14 DAY TRIAL // Members of the Anonymous hacker collective have breached one of South Africa's job portals, stolen all the data, but only leaked details belonging to government employees.
The attack was part of Anonymous' most recent iteration of the #OpAfrica campaign, which was launched at the start of February and was preceded by hacks carried out against Rwanda and Uganda.
The hacktivists are trying to raise awareness of a series of aspects that affect the well-being of Africans, such as government corruption and the power Western corporations have inside these states. But above all, the hackers are trying to bring to everyone’s attention the rampant use of child labor among local or foreign companies activating in South Africa.
Because the local government hasn't done anything about the issue of child labor all these years, Anonymous members issued a warning by hacking V-Report, a local job portal that operates in South Africa. The hackers sifted through all the data, separated only government employees, and published their details online.
Only government data was released, nothing belonging to innocent citizens
"We had information about 33,000+ job seekers," the hackers said. "But we just prefer to publish government officers data."
The group released the data of 54 officials, who used their government-issued email to register on V-Report. Leaked data only included their name, government email, and ID number.
The data dump included the details of government employees working for the South African Department of Home Affairs, Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Labour, Department of Public Works, Department of Mineral Resouces, Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Department of Basic Education, Department of Justice and Correctional Services, Social Security Agency, National Treasury, the South African Parliament, Police Service, and Presidency's Office.
Below is a presentation video for Anonymous' OpAfrica endeavor, along with a sample of the leaked data.
UPDATE: Just minutes after this post has gone live, Anonymous members have also dumped data acquired from hacking the South African Government Communication and Information System (GCIS). This data contains the personal details of over 1,500 government employees. Leaked data includes real names, email addresses, and MD5-hashed passwords.
