Between May and June 2026, South Africa’s Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) located at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) experienced a cyberattack targeting the Lengau high-performance computing system. Attackers gained unauthorized access to the supercomputer where they deployed cryptocurrency-mining malware.

Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Blade Nzimande, explained to members of Parliament last week that the breach was being investigated. The breach occurred because of vulnerabilities associated with the decade-old high-performance computing system. The minister reported that only certain components of the system were affected by the breach and not the wider national…