Westonaria Municipality guilty of hacking
'The municipality also made illegal copies of the BIQ system and installed it on other servers.'
The Gauteng division of the High Court has found the Westonaria Local Municipality guilty of illegally hacking the BIQ (Business Intelligence Quotient) computer system in order to bypass the licence expiry date.
This statement was issued by Chris Fourie, provincial coordinator of Gauteng South, AfriForum.
The municipality also made illegal copies of the BIQ system and installed it on other servers.
The municipality was ordered by Judge S. Potterill to pay an amount of R5,75 million.
Quill Associates (Pty) Ltd had built a function into the BIQ software program that automatically disables it when the licence expires. Although the database structure remains, all executional programs are removed and the program becomes dysfunctional.
“The function is an inherent part of the program through its licence key and the program does the disabling automatically; no one needs to go to the client’s premises to disable the program.
“The Westonaria Local Municipality then mandated Comperio Forensic Services (Pty) Ltd on 31 August 2012 via a communique from the office of the Municipal Manager to secure the AS400 environment and BIQ applications to give the municipality access to historic financial data. Comperio changed all the passwords on the security profiles and these passwords were then given to the IT Manager,” Fourie said.
Fourie continued, “Comperio reinstated the BIQ program, made a copy of it and transferred it to the Power 720 server. Comperio changed the master file and, as a result, the Westonaria Municipality was once again able to use the full BIQ programme.”
The actions of the municipality are indeed worrisome, although they knew there is a dispute over the licence, they still employed an entity to change the expiry date of the licence – not once, but twice.
This is not public administration governed by the values and principles enshrined in our Constitution.”
AfriForum wrote to the office of the Auditor General and requested him to determine which part of the R5,75 million he considers to be fruitless and wasteful. AfriForum will definitely take action against the municipality if it is found there was fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Comment is still awaited from the Westonaria Local Municipality spokesperson, Kgabana Madiehe.
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