The theft of Interpol computers possibly linked to the SA Police Service central system has exposed the government’s “extreme vulnerability” to cyber criminals.
If the data on the computers lands in the wrong hands it could potentially destroy investigations into international crime syndicates, experts said yesterday.
It is possible the thieves could access the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) systems through the stolen equipment and specialised IT programs.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-General Solomon Makgale said an investigation has been launched and CCTV footage, “which we are reviewing”, obtained.
“We have various IT security measures and protocols that we apply for managing sensitive information,” Makgale said.
At the weekend a group of people accessed offices used by police officers seconded to Interpol. F ive laptops, computer tablets, cameras and data storage devices were stolen.
A police source said yesterday certain parts of the SAPS IT systems were linked to Sita, which, according to its website, is designed to “consolidate and coordinate the state’s information technology resources”.
Any theft of Sita data, could mean “disaster”, according to IT and cyber crime experts.
The theft took place weeks after burglars stole three laptops from Sita offices in Centurion.
Bennie Labuschagne of Cyanre, The Computer Forensic Lab, said: “While it depends on what computers were taken, whom they belonged to and their users’ functions, we need to look at this in its totality.
“Sita provides e-mail support [and] hi-tech systems looking after government’s IT technology infrastructure. If these computers are connected to the Sita system they can, through very specialised assistance, be used for malicious purposes.”
Wolfpack Information Risk director Craig Rosewarne said the government, like any corporation, was under constant threat from criminal syndicates and other governments’ spy agencies.
“Our [government and corporations’] vulnerability is extreme.
“In other developed countries there is huge effort to fight cyber crime, but we are not seeing this here at a national level,” he said.
“Yes, government has a computer-security-incident response team [Csirt] to deal with certain threats, but there isn’t a national team.
“It’s not being dealt with strategically. We are far behind where we should be.”
Rosewarne said the Interpol theft strengthened the case for deeper collaboration between the government and private industry and for the formation of a national Csirt.
“These investigations require speed. When an incident happens the clock is ticking. You have to stop the bleed of information,” he said.
- Gareth Newham of the Institute for Security Studies clarified comments he made in yesterday’s article on the theft and minimum standards required to classify information, saying: “I don’t have reason to assume that minimum standards were not in place. I was saying because minimum standards can be assumed to have been in place, it probably was not an ordinary burglary.”