eThekwini Municipality.
Data breach. Data classes exposed: Dates of birth, Deceased date, Email addresses, Genders, Government issued IDs, Names, Passport numbers, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Utility bills. Source: haveibeenpwned.com.
How the attack happened.
In September 2016, the new eThekwini eServices website in South Africa was launched with a number of security holes that lead to the leak of over 98k residents' personal information and utility bills across 82k unique email addresses. Emails were sent prior to launch containing passwords in plain text and the site allowed anyone to download utility bills without sufficient authentication. Various methods of customer data enumeration was possible and phishing attacks began appearing the day after launch.
Impact.
Data classes exposed: Dates of birth, Deceased date, Email addresses, Genders, Government issued IDs, Names, Passport numbers, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Utility bills. Source: haveibeenpwned.com.
Primary sources.
- haveibeenpwned.com (2016-09-15)
Other breaches in the pending review sector.
- JD Group (2023) — Data breach
- Experian (South Africa) (2020) — Data breach
- ViewFines (2018) — Data breach