‘Database with data of thirty million South Africans leaks’

Security researcher Troy Hunt has been sent a database with details of at least thirty million South Africans. The database includes the thirteen-digit ID number, marital status, income, work and home ownership of citizens.

Hunt, who runs the HaveIBeenPwned website, calls the leak was “one of the worst he’s seen yet.” He shared his findings with the site iAfrikan and said the database is 27GB in total. Hunt also referred to a file on Pastebin that shows the headers of the database. According to a newer release from the site, the data is still online.

The researcher started importing the database and stopped when he had to leave. At the time, he had imported unique data from thirty million individuals. IAfrikan writes that the database also contains data from deceased persons and is therefore probably even larger. The author of the news item looked up his own data in the database and found data about an internship he had completed in 1998.

Furthermore, the database would contain approximately 2.2 million email addresses. IAfrikan suspects that the data came from a credit registry or other data collection service. The site says it has found indications that it concerns data company Dracore.