Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube has vowed there will be dire consequences for those guilty of leaking the 2024 matric results to third-parties.
This, after local online education company Edumarks has been under fire for allegedly selling 2024 matric results to learners for R100 online, a few days before the department officially announces the official results.
During a media briefing held this morning to recognise the top-performing matriculants, Gwarube said the State Security Agency of SA and the Hawks are investigating a possible data leak.
She assured the public that the incident, which was discovered two days ago, has not compromised the integrity of the results – which are due to be announced tonight.
“It became clear to us about 48 hours ago that there is a potential breach in our information. Because there are multiple steps in putting together the matric results, the breach seems to have happened only at the tail-end of the results processing, so these are results that have already been finalised.
“Just to be clear to everybody about what we are talking about, the results themselves may have been leaked. I’m not able to say definitively if, in fact, these results have been leaked, but we have utilised the services of the Hawks and the State Security Agency, and we are grateful to them for being able to step in and assist us in terms of [conducting] a speedy investigation.”
According to Gwarube, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) is aware of the website that has been “selling matric results and preying on innocent learners”.
The Edumarks site, which was running this morning, is currently unavailable. A Whois search of the site shows no ownership or contact information for the domain, only that Afrihost is the registrar for it. The search also shows the domain status as ‘serverHold’.
The minister pointed out that if there is indeed a breach of the DBE system, there are two processes the department will follow.
“We need to determine as the DBE if our systems are secure and airtight enough. There is a possibility that the breach may have come from stakeholders – once we’ve compiled the matric results, we have to share them with certain stakeholders.
“If the breach has come from the DBE side, we will be launching an investigation and consequence management will follow. It is absolutely critical that this process is as airtight as possible.”
The Information Regulator recently suffered a blow in its bid to interdict the DBE from publishing matric results in the media, when its urgent application was thrown out of court.
Attempts by ITWeb to contact the Edumarks offices were unfruitful, as there was no answer to the company’s landline.
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