Cause of breach on SA’s supercomputer revealed

South Africa's Lengau supercomputer was breached due to vulnerabilities in its legacy high-performance computing system, according to insights from a Parliamentary reply by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) minister. The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC)'s Lengau supercomputer, a national strategic research asset and part of the National Integrated Cyber Infrastructure System (NICIS), was affected by a cyber security incident at the end of May.

The DSTI minister, Professor Blade Nzimande, responded to MK MP Thembinkosi Mjadu's inquiry about technical and governance failures, accountability measures, and the implementation status of independently audited cyber security upgrades. The minister stated that the legacy environment led to ageing, technically constrained components and lack of full support from original vendors.

The breach involved unauthorized access to certain components and deployment of crypto-currency mining malware, but the integrity of the broader service was preserved. The CSIR has initiated an internal review and accountability process, implemented a cyber security remediation and resilience program for the CHPC environment, and engaged an independent team for forensic analysis and technical remediation.

Measures include strengthening access controls, enhancing privileged-access management, improving network segmentation, hardening affected systems, and increasing monitoring to detect suspicious activity. While no environment is immune to future threats, the implemented measures aim to strengthen the resilience, integrity, and security posture of the Lengau supercomputing environment.