South African Weather Service hit by ransomware attack
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The South African Weather Service is reporting a significant ransomware attack that has kept its website and IT systems offline since January 26, 2025.
The organization, which provides weather information to critical sectors including aviation, agriculture, and marine services, as well as the general public, expects to restore its services within the next week, marking nearly a month of disruption.
The organization received a "generic ransom note" allegedly from the Russian-linked cybercrime group RansomHub, no specific ransom amount has been demanded. Saws has maintained its essential operations and runs weather prediction models through isolated high-performance computing facilities.
No details are disclosed about compromised data or number of affected individuals.
To maintain service continuity during the outage, Saws has shifted to using social media platforms, particularly their account on Twitter, to distribute weather forecasts and aviation-related weather information.
