Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development of South Africa (DOJCD)

History

2021: Ransomware Virus Attack

In September 2021, it became known about the ransomware virus attack on the South African Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development (DOJCD). According to Mybroadband, hackers demand a ransom of 50 bitcoins from the department in exchange for restoring access to hacked systems.

According to Mybroadband, the ministry engaged an IT company to try to regain control of hacked systems. After studying the attack, this company advised the Ministry of Justice to pay the ransom and allocate a budget for the cloud backup system and only after paying the ransom will the department be able to regain control over all electronic services, also in its report Mybroadband said that it had requested additional information from the Ministry of Justice about the nature of the attack on its IT system, and that the latter promised to provide information.

The South African Ministry of Justice attacked the extortion virus. Hackers require 50 bitcoins

Meanwhile, the South African Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development (DOJCD) has denied claims that it received a ransom demand of 50 bitcoins from hackers. Instead, DOJCD insists that its technical experts, industry partners and individual government agencies are making every effort to localize the problem and restore systems affected by the ransomware virus attack. The department said that the article published by Mybroadband on September 20, 2021 is completely untrue.

Some users of social networks questioned the statements of the Ministry of Justice that he did not receive a demand for redemption. For example, one user insists that this ransomware attack will be solved only by conceding to the requirements of hackers. Another user said that this attack showed the ineptitude of the person in charge of the IT department.^[1]

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