Missouri Vows to Prosecute ‘Hacker’ Who Informed State About Data Leak

upnorth

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Malware Hunter
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Jul 27, 2015
5,456
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper recently found a huge security blunder: The Missouri educational agency’s site was displaying 100,000+ clearly visible Social-Security numbers for school teachers, administrators and counselors in its HTML source code. The newspaper verified its findings with a cybersecurity professor and then informed the agency responsible for the leaking site – the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) – on Tuesday. On the same day, the DESE took down the affected pages. Then, on Wednesday, having waited to disclose the vulnerability until after the pages came down, the outlet published its story.

The next day, on Thursday morning, a naked emperor shot the messenger, as Missouri Gov. Mike Parson threatened legal action against whoever found the vulnerability and whoever may have helped them. He called the unnamed journalist a “hacker,” vowed to sic the courts on the individual and said the state would try to recoup incident-response costs that might cost taxpayers “as much as $50 million.”
 

plat

Level 29
Top Poster
Sep 13, 2018
1,793
omG how stupid.

It's like stopping to give water to someone dying of thirst in the desert and when he's revived, he shoots you. What is that--killing the messenger or something like that.

Someone needs to step down from the podium. No respect.
 
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Kubla

Level 8
Verified
Jan 22, 2017
355
Almost sounds like Missouri Gov. Mike Parson was in on a sale of that data and now that it was found out won't get paid so is enacting revenge for it.
 
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