Charges laid against bank report hackers

The charges have been laid in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, the Commission's manager for Strategy and Stakeholder Relations, Nandisile Mokoena, said. The confidential information is contained in the technical report of the inquiry into the banking system undertaken by the commission. An uncensored version of the report was posted on the Wikileaks.org Web site after hackers - believed to be based in SA - broke through the security measures put in place by the Commission. The banks agreed to the public release of the report only on condition that strategic and sensitive information relating to their customer profiling, profit growth, pricing strategies, cost structures and revenue from penalty fees was blacked out. The Commission gave this undertaking of confidentiality, which is legally binding in terms of the Competition Act. However, the secret information was decrypted (except for certain blacked-out sections which were resistant to 'decensoring') and posted on Wikileaks, which describes itself as a Web site for anonymous whistle-blowers. It is dedicated to leaking sensitive government, corporate and religious documents. Full Business Day report Uncensored report on Wikileaks site