Pretoria - The South African Police Service (SAPS) says no important case information was compromised when their website was hacked on Tuesday.
SAPS said the information published after the breach was already available on the website.
SAPS has a facility available on its website, where a person may log a request to be addressed by a specific station or division, or merely give a compliment.
The individual may log the request either with a name and contact details or anonymously, depending on their choice.
“The persons who submitted their names and contact details made it available in order for a representative of the SAPS to contact them.
“This list was also available for the people who hacked into the website,” said SAPS spokesperson Brigadier Phuti Setati.
He said SITA has since addressed the security on the above details.
Setati said the information that was accessed was information that is published usually, and the names and contact details of divisions and provinces, which is made public on the website in any case.
Setati reassured that no case information or classified information was compromised, as this information resides in the mainframe systems of the SAPS, which is hosted separately from the website.
“State Information Technology Agency (SITA) hosts and manages the website of the SAPS separately from the rest of the corporate systems of the SAPS. For this reason, no criminal information or case information was compromised at all.
“In fact, the corporate systems of the SAPS are hosted in a building in the Pretoria CBD, while the website of the SAPS is hosted in the data centre of SITA in Centurion,” said Setati.
“Hacking the website of the SAPS will always be a matter that the hacker community will strive to achieve and therefore the website of the SAPS and the corporate systems of the SAPS are hosted on completely different networks and therefore no corporate information of the SAPS will be compromised if and when the website is accessed unlawfully,” said Setati. – SAnews.gov.za
