Idris
While MultiChoice, the parent company of Showmax, has not yet provided details on how the attackers obtained this data, they have acknowledged the attack assuring that their cybersecurity team is actively addressing the situation.
According to a blog post the company said
Showmax was recently made aware of an external incident where an unknown party published a small number of subscriber login details on an illicit websiteAs soon as we were notified about this, our cybersecurity team initiated an investigation to assess the scope and nature of the incident.Showmax
As highlighted in the MyBroadBand report, a thorough analysis of the leaked file indicates that it consists of 27,911 lines, with each line containing an email address serving as a username.
A brute force attackis when hackers use trialanderror to guess login info, encryption keys, or hidden personal details.
Our initial investigation showed that some of our customers emails and passwords were compromised, the Showmax blog post further stated.
This is coming a year after Vulners highlighted a concerning issue regarding Showmaxs authentication and password recovery pages.
However, it is worth noting that the initial 100 or so lines appear to contain incomplete or truncated records.
Upon initial examination, it seems that the leak may have occurred due to credential harvesting through a bruteforce attack, as a significant number of the passwords identified were deemed weak in nature.
Keypoints
- Technext Newsletter
- Showmax in a continent with low cybersecurity
- How to protect yourself from data breaches and cyberthreats