South Africa’s Weather Service Crippled by Cyberattack

Summary

The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has been offline since a cyberattack on Sunday, January 26, 2025. Critical services, including aviation and marine forecasts, have been disrupted, forcing airlines and other stakeholders to find alternative solutions. SAWS is working to restore services and has resorted to social media platforms to disseminate vital weather information.

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Main Story

Okay, so picture this: the South African Weather Service – or SAWS, you know, the main source for weather data across South Africa and some neighboring countries – completely knocked offline. It wasn’t just a little glitch; this was a full-blown cyberattack that happened on Sunday, January 26th, 2025. And yeah, it was a total mess.

The immediate impact was pretty widespread, touching key sectors like aviation, marine navigation, agriculture – basically anyone who needs reliable weather info, which is just about everyone. The hackers, they were persistent, actually, hitting SAWS twice in two days. They managed to get into their IT systems, taking down their website, their email services – the whole thing.

Frankly, this highlights how vulnerable our critical infrastructure is, doesn’t it? You know, we often think of these systems as being rock solid, but these kinds of attacks can cause a lot of disruption. It wasn’t just South Africa, either. SAWS provides info to places like Mozambique and Zambia, so the regional impact was quite big. And, as of February 4th, the website was still down. You’d think they’d have a plan for this, right? Anyway, the CEO was supposed to talk about the attack on the 30th, at least.

In the meantime, SAWS has been scrambling to use other channels, they’ve been posting on Facebook and X (what used to be Twitter). It’s pretty impressive, actually. Whilst the usual aviation and marine forecasts were disrupted, they’re managing to put out updates through these other channels, sending daily emails to news outlets and disaster management people. Airlines, for example, are having to find other weather sources, since, you know, you can’t legally send a plane without a forecast. It just adds another layer of complexity to their already challenging situation.

And here’s the thing – it’s not like this was a one off incident. South Africa has seen an increase in cyberattacks, on both public institutions and private companies. There was a data breach at CIPC, with the potential to leak data on registered businesses. The Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) was hit with ransomware, which compromised government employees’ personal information. We also saw issues at the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), a data breach and system shutdown. It’s a serious pattern. You’d think, as a result, they’d double down on preventative measures. This all just makes you think… are we doing enough?

This SAWS attack raises some serious questions. What were the vulnerabilities that they exploited? What are they doing to get the services back up and improve security? And what are the long-term effects on South Africa’s infrastructure and its regional partners? It’s critical we analyze the root causes, assess the damage, and implement strong measures to prevent these kinds of things in the future. It’s a stark reminder of the growing cyber threat and the importance of being prepared and having good cybersecurity. They need to be proactive, not reactive. I’m sure we’re all learning from it, and will hopefully be better off going forward.