{"id":855214,"date":"2026-03-29T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T14:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=855214"},"modified":"2026-03-29T17:33:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T15:33:57","slug":"stats-sa-breached-in-cyberattack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/855214\/stats-sa-breached-in-cyberattack\/","title":{"rendered":"Stats SA breached in cyberattack"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>South Africa&#8217;s statistics agency, Stats SA, has confirmed that its systems have been breached by a ransomware attack, marking the second major government breach this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The attack was perpetrated by a cybercrime group known as XP95, which breached the Gauteng Provincial Government earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That breach resulted in <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/633359-south-africas-richest-province-hacked-with-gigabytes-of-personal-data-on-sale-for-r420000.html\"><strong>3.8TB of people\u2019s personal data<\/strong><\/a> being stolen, which was put up for sale for over R400,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the latest attack, the hackers claim to have stolen 453,362 files totalling 154 GB of data from an unspecified Stats SA server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cyber-extortionists have demanded a ransom payment of $100,000 (R1.7 million) to prevent the public release of the stolen data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stats SA confirmed to MyBroadband that it is aware of the breach, adding that it would not pay the ransom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The agency said that a single HR database was affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Stats SA is aware of a cybersecurity breach affecting one Human Resources database. The system that was breached is exclusively the HR system available for job seekers to apply online,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;The national statistics office is part of a wider government response to matters dealing with cybersecurity breaches. Stats SA will not pay any ransom.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stats SA noted that the deployment of state financial resources is done only in line with the PFMA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, it said it will notify the information regulator and will be guided by their processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/636993-south-african-government-agency-with-sensitive-data-breached-in-r1-7-million-ransomware-attack.html\"><strong>According to MyBroadband<\/strong><\/a>, XP95 has set a 20 April 2026 deadline for the payment, after which the group threatens to leak the full Stats SA archive online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The hacker group is relatively new to the scene, emerging in March. It operates with a unique interface that mimics legacy Microsoft Windows operating systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The group\u2019s name is a combination of two older versions of Microsoft\u2019s operating system: Windows XP and Windows 95.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s statistics agency, Stats SA, has confirmed that its systems have been breached by a ransomware attack, marking the second major government breach this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":787357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1809],"class_list":["post-855214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-stats-sa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855214"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":855218,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855214\/revisions\/855218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}