Master Deeds Data Breach

What happened?

In March 2017, a 27GB database backup file named "Master Deeds" was sent to HIBP by a supporter of the project. Upon detailed analysis later that year, the file was found to contain the personal data of tens of millions of living and deceased South African residents. The data included extensive personal attributes such as names, addresses, ethnicities, genders, birth dates, government issued personal identification numbers and 2.2 million email addresses. At the time of publishing, it's alleged the data was sourced from Dracore Data Sciences (Dracore is yet to publicly confirm or deny the data was sourced from their systems). On 18 October 2017, the file was found to have been published to a publicly accessible web server where it was located at the root of an IP address with directory listing enabled. The file was dated 8 April 2015.

When did it happen?

The breach date in the public record is March 14, 2017. The record was added to the catalogue on October 18, 2017 and last updated there on October 18, 2017.

What information was reported as exposed?

• Dates of birth
• Deceased statuses
• Email addresses
• Employers
• Ethnicities
• Genders
• Government issued IDs
• Home ownership statuses
• Job titles
• Names
• Nationalities
• Phone numbers
• Physical addresses

These are incident-level categories. The record does not prove that every category was exposed for every affected person.

Who may be affected?

This record may be relevant to people who had an account or other relationship with Master Deeds around March 14, 2017. A catalogue entry does not establish that every customer was affected or that every listed data category applied to each person. Compare the record with an official notice addressed to you.

What should you do?

Choose actions that match the information involved. If you find signs that someone is using your identity, the Federal Trade Commission provides a personal recovery plan at IdentityTheft.gov.