Just How Inept Is The British Government…..
…..At keeping its citizen's private banking information private? Apparently, they are in a class by themselves for ineptitude, according to The Times.
Security breaches that are allowing the financial details of tens of thousands of Britons to be sold on the internet are to be investigated by the country’s information watchdog.
Without paying a single penny, The Times downloaded banking information belonging to 32 people, including a High Court deputy judge and a managing director. The private account numbers, PINs and security codes were offered as tasters by illegal hacking sites in the hope that purchases would follow.
Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, will begin an investigation into the security breach today and Scotland Yard is also investigating. Experts said that the findings suggested that more personal data than ever before was going astray. The Times found: More than 100 websites trafficking British bank details A fraudster offering to sell 30,000 British credit card numbers for less than £1 each A British “e-passport” for sale, although the Government insists that they are unhackable.
The discovery comes as public alarm is growing about the dangers of identity theft. HM Revenue & Customs has yet to retrieve two lost CDs containing the banking details of 25 million Britons, which ministers admitted had vanished in the post a fortnight ago. At current underworld prices, these could fetch more than £100 million if they fell into the hands of hackers.
The incident with the two lost data disks was only the tip of the data iceberg, so to speak. There have been literally thousands of data loss incidents by the government. There are, of course, other ways that this data is being stolen by criminal elements, including malicious software. But the government appears to be really, really bad at keeping its citizen's secrets. I rather suspect that Gordon Brown will not last long as Prime Minister.
World news | Gaius Monday, 3 December , 2007
By teqjack, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Unhackable? I was in IT tech support for almost thirty years, and during that whole time it was acknowledged that the only “unhackable” computer was one that had no data, no operating system, no storage medium, no supply of power, was locked in the vaults at Fort Knox, and had been designed under the rubric of Rube Goldberg.
Not that any hacking is needed if (un-encrypted!) files disappear while in “sneaker-mail” transit.
By Gaius, Monday, 3 December , 2007 @ 5:51 pm
Yeah. I know. Scary, isn’t it?