BCX says it is investigating an incident that resulted in adult content being displayed on its Web site description page yesterday.
A source informed ITWeb that on trying to visit the ICT services company Web site, he was automatically redirected to a home page that advertises sex dolls.
Responding to ITWeb’s query on the matter, a BCX spokesperson said preliminary investigations have revealed that the BCX network was not hacked, nor did it suffer a security breach.
“On 14 January 2021, we noticed that BCX’s page description was altered; this was corrected and resolved. We view this attack to our reputation in the most serious light. Preliminary investigations reveal that metadata was altered on search engines,” said the spokesperson.
Metadata spoofing is described as an act in which an attacker or program is able to maliciously alter an HTML document that describes and summarises the contents of a Web page for the benefit of users and search engines.
A screen shot of the incident sent to ITWeb shows Google search results of BCX’s Web page description being falsified as a site that sells a variety of silicone sex dolls.
Commenting on the ramifications of the attack on clients and employees, the BCX spokesperson explained: “We can confirm that no employee or customer was affected by the alteration. Once our investigation is complete, BCX will take more stringent steps to correct the issue.”
The COVID-19 crisis has created new opportunities for cyber attackers, with security experts warning of an increase in advanced attacks exploiting the global health crisis.
According to a report compiled by VPN provider, Atlas VPN, the number of leaked data records exposed globally reached 36.1 billion in the first three-quarters of 2020 – more than double the number of records leaked in the entire 2019.
Last year, several local companies suffered cyber attacks on their systems, including credit bureau Experian, Absa Bank, construction group Stefanutti Stocks, Lombard Insurance and Momentum Metropolitan.
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