Snatch gang claims the hack of the Department of Defence South Africa

Snatch gang claims the hack of the Department of Defence South Africa and added the military organization to its leak site.

The Snatch ransomware group added the Department of Defence South Africa to its data leak site.

The mission of the Department of Defence is to provide, manage, prepare and employ defence capabilities commensurate with the needs of South Africa, as regulated by the Constitution, national legislation, parliamentary and executive direction.

The group claims to have stolen Military contracts, internal call signs and personal data, for a total of 1.6 TB of data. If the attack will be confirmed the disclosure of confidential information pose a serious risk to organizations involved in the contracts.

At the time of this writing the leak site is unreachable.

In October 2022, the Snatch ransomware group claimed to have hacked the French company HENSOLDT France. HENSOLDT is a company specializing in military and defense electronics.

The Snatch ransomware was first spotted at the end of 2019, Sophos researchers discovered a piece of the Snatch ransomware that reboots computers it infects into Safe Mode to bypass resident security solutions.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Department of Defence South Africa)