Two of South Africa’s largest retailers were recently hit by data breaches that most likely didn’t happen overnight. Shoprite Holdings LTD had 600GB worth of mixed data, leaked, and a few days prior to this Dis-Chem experienced a similar event.
Shoprite Holdings LTD’s data was uploaded to a public platform for all to download by hacker group RansomHouse that was seeking negotiation to extort a ransom. Dis-Chem posted a notice on their website advising customers that 3.5 million client records had now been exfiltrated from their systems. These events should ideally have been expected and were to some extent avoidable considering how TransUnion was hacked just several weeks before this with much news published about the hack.
Shoprite Holdings LTD is Africa’s largest supermarket chain and operates almost three thousand stores across twelve countries on the African continent. The company recently disclosed that they suffered a security incident, warning customers in the countries of Eswatini, Namibia, and Zambia that their personal information may have been compromised due to the cyberattack according to an article published by Bleepingcomputer.com.
The JSE-listed Dis-Chem Pharmacies recently disclosed that a data incident that involved a “third-party service provider or operator” may have led to the compromise of millions of customer records that contained their personal information. The third party has not been named yet but Dis-Chem said in a holding statement sent to TechCentral that the company in question had suffered a ‘suspected cyberattack’. In the article published by Techcentral.co.za it was mentioned that no sensitive medical, financial or banking information was contained in the database and that it “immediately took necessary action” and “all possible steps have been taken to isolate the threat”.”
Image source – Dis-Chem