Major international brand hit by data breach in South Africa

Adidas South Africa has notified customers that it has suffered a data breach with people’s names, email addresses, phone numbers, genders, and birth dates potentially exposed.

“Adidas recently learned that an unauthorised external party gained access to certain customer data through a third-party customer service provider,” the clothing brand stated.

“The identity of the unauthorised party is not confirmed.” Adidas assured the affected data did not contain passwords, credit card details, or any other payment-related information.

Adidas said the affected data mainly consists of contact information for customers who have contacted its customer service help desk in the past.

“Upon becoming aware of this incident, Adidas took proactive and immediate steps to investigate and contain the incident. This includes further enhancing security measures,” it said.

Adidas said customers need not take immediate steps, so long as they are and remain vigilant for the usual online security threats.

“As a reminder, Adidas will never directly contact you to ask that you provide us with financial information, such as your credit card details, bank account information, or passwords,” it said.

Adidas’ cybersecurity incident is the latest in a string of high-profile breaches and leaks that have hit South African businesses and government agencies.

MTN and Cell C recently reported breaches. While Cell C was up-front and provided details about the ransomware attack it suffered, MTN was more tight-lipped, only saying that some people in certain markets were affected.

Orange Cyberdefense’s head of security research, Charl van der Walt, recently told MyBroadband that cybercriminal activity targeting South Africa is expected to intensify in line with global patterns.

However, he also believes incidents could worsen faster in South Africa than elsewhere in the world.

Van der Walt explained that cybercrime comes from a systemic context of diverse political, economic, sociocultural, and technological factors.

“The trajectory of crime in the country will change only when these factors change,” he said.

Cybercrime surge in South Africa

Van der Walt said a brief assessment indicates South Africa’s technology is equivalent to that of other countries.

However, it tends to lag behind on some metrics, such as universality, digital adoption, and security capabilities.

“Socioculturally and economically, things remain the same, or arguably evolve to increase crime. Politically, the situation is only getting more complex, both in Africa and in the ‘global north’,” he said.

“My read of the systemic context suggests that crime patterns will probably intensify in line with global patterns, or potentially get worse more quickly.”

He explained that, globally, the volume and intensity of cybercrime shows little sign of subsiding, adding that if anything, cybercrime merely shifts in response to geopolitical swings.

“In today’s climate, it’s very hard to predict if and how geopolitics shapes cybercrime in (South) Africa, but I can see very few scenarios in which the near future looks more secure to us,” Van der Walt said.

For example, South African organisations might expect to see more business email compromise scams as a result of lower digital literacy and weaker corporate finance governance protocols.

He added that they expect to see more crime stemming from fraudulent SIM swaps and alternate payment systems, while crypto-related thefts and fraud are expected to be less frequent.

Van der Walt said that, in addition to opportunistic criminals and more organised crime, state and state-aligned hacktivists are other threat actors to consider.

“State activities can be thought of broadly as espionage (which is common, continuous, and probably not really that ‘disruptive’) and ‘power projection’,” he said.

“State-aligned hacktivism is essentially a new form of state-aligned power projection, and so are mis- and disinformation, hack and leak campaigns, and targeted attacks on critical infrastructure.”

Van der Walt believes South Africa is very exposed to diverse forms of state-aligned power projection campaigns.

“To a degree, these are worrying because they have the potential to impact South Africa’s long-term financial and political prospects,” he said.