The Gauteng Provincial Government has launched an investigation into the hacking of the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development's e-Maintenance Web site over the weekend.
The Gauteng Provincial Government launched the site in October last year for members of the public and health workers to report service delivery defects they encounter in facilities at the health institutions.
It enables any member of the public, and not only hospital staff, to log any maintenance issue via the maintenance reception at the facility, SMS, the Web site or on social media.
Gauteng MEC for infrastructure development Nandi Mayathula-Khoza said the province acted swiftly to thwart the hacking.
"We did not suffer any data loss. One file was corrupted and it has since been replaced. A detailed investigation has been launched."
According to information on the Web site, so far a total of 139 206 out of 169 808 reported maintenance issues have been fixed.
The technicians, as a precautionary measure, removed the e-Maintenance Web site from the network. This means the entire maintenance function is down and the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development's artisans will not be able to receive reports on defects or order materials.
However, Mayathula-Khoza said the impact on maintenance was low due to minimal maintenance activity during the weekend.
Government has long been criticised for a lack of decisive policy and control over the growing problem of cyber crime.
The State Security Agency is tasked, in terms of the Cabinet-approved Cyber Security Policy Framework, with co-ordinating government's response to matters of cyber security.
Delivering the ministry's 2015/2016 budget vote speech, state security minister David Mahlobo said cyber security was top of its priority list.
The South African government is in the process of passing new legislation - the Cybercrimes and Cyber Security Bill. The new Bill will allow it to define the offences for such attacks, with the list of offences being drastically expanded, and the fines for existing infringements being increased.
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