CAPE TOWN - Troy Hunt, the person that revealed the massive data breach, has uploaded the compromised email addresses to a website.
Hunt has created a free service site called Have I Been Pwned(HIBP).
The website has loaded a search function for people to find out if their email addresses has been compromised.
While other information such as ID numbers, employer information and estimated salaries are available, Hunt has decided to only upload victims' email addresses.
Hunt is the Regional Director and MVP for Developer Security. Online security, technology and “The Cloud" for Microsoft.
“I've loaded the 2.2 million unique email addresses in the data set into HIBP. You can search for your email there now and it will give you a yes or no answer as to whether it exists, but obviously the addresses only represent a small portion of the overall data set,” Hunt said in a blog post on his website.
“I do not have any plans to make the personal identification numbers searchable. Given the sensitivity of that data, it's not information I want to be responsible for managing on a service like this. However, given the size of the data as compared to the population of South Africa, there's an extremely high likelihood that anyone with an ID is in the data set,” he added.
Just blogged: Questions about the Massive South African "Master Deeds" Data Breach Answered https://t.co/zUTpfyZWFw
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) October 19, 2017
Meanwhile, the Southern African Fraud Prevention Service (SAFPS) has warned South Africans to proceed with caution when checking information online.
Manie van Schalkwyk of SAFPS stated that exposure is dangerous in that it presents an opportunity for fraudsters to open accounts and transact as one of the named parties in the leaked profiles, with enough information to verify that transaction as being conducted by themselves.
He further added that this could be both a breach and a hack where a hacker was potentially looking for an opportunity. van Schalkwyk said, “A hacker could have various motives,” he says. “They could sell the information, be seeking revenge on an organisation or looking to create harm. These all have repercussions.”