Cybersecurity News South Africa

4 million IP addresses worth R1.3bn have been stolen, SA companies impacted

NEWSWATCH: The African Network Information Centre (Afrinic) has released its report of the internal audit it conducted after the discovery that its co-founder had abused his position to steal a large number of African internet resources, according to a report by MyBroadband.
Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash
Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash

The report reveals a total of over 4.1 million Internet Protocol (IP) addresses had been misappropriated and a detailed account of the resources that were compromised.

Afrinic also mentions in the report that it only became aware that it may have an internal problem in 2019 after the United States Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI) raised red flags.

Four years before the FBI drew attention to the numerous anomalies – and the Supreme Court of Mauritius served Afrinic with an order to investigate – the information centre was tipped off by internet investigator Ron Guilmette, says Business Insider South Africa in another report.

Dozens of South African-based companies impacted

Business Insider South Africa's report further mentions that the Free State Department of Education and Anglo American both lost IP addresses to the value of almost R20m, while the now-defunct Infoplan, which previously managed the Department of Defence’s information systems, was the worst hit, losing addresses worth approximately R80m.

Three whole IP blocks, equating to almost 200,000 individual addresses, belonging to Woolworths were misappropriated. MyBroadband estimates the value of these stolen addresses to exceed R58m.

Similarly, three IP blocks belonging to Nedbank – historically associated with Cape of Good Hope Bank Limited, Syfrets, and NBS Bank – were also part of the heist.

Other major South African organisations which had their IP addresses misappropriated include Nampak, Sasol, the City of Cape Town’s Directorate of Information Services, Transnet, and Independent Media’s Argus Holdings.

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