News Forum - Cyberpunk data thief allegedly an army sergeant

[Thaiger]

The cyberpunk who hacked into a government database and threatened to release the personal data of 55 million Thai people is believed to be an army sergeant. Police held the unnamed army sergeant and his wife this morning in relation to hacking the personal data of 55 million Thais and putting the information up for …

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[Chatogaster]

3 hours ago, Thaiger said:

The incident raised concerns about the security of personal data, and authorities will have to work out measures to ensure its security. The hacker’s actions have exposed the vulnerability of sensitive data and the need for stringent security measures.

 

It doesn't really raise concerns, it only confirms concerns that have been standing tall for a long time.

Assuming that the nurses' access was conductive to the theft and that she isn't an especially privileged one, it seems that any nurses' account (of which there are many!) can be used to scrape personal data of close to the entire population out of the database without even basic safe-guards like automatic, real-time monitoring raising alarms. 

I've seen way too many systems that expose their inner workings through their responses, APIs whose naivety is hard to believe (until a simple test shows that the back-end really is as facepalm worthy as was suggested), apps with embedded plain-text security keys and the list goes on. 

A major problem is the sheer amount of individual apps Thailand releases. Now there's a newly released Songkran app to let police know you're away, essentially asking them to protect valuables in/of houses a bit. Nice idea, but undoubtedly the "security" wheel was re-invented (with due flaws) or the need for security was ignored beyond the most trivial levels.

It isn't all hopeless, just a state of affairs that could have been solved many years ago already. If authorities are willing to work out measures to ensure security, a major part of that effort is to (finally) invest in developing a uniform, well-secured platform for all governmental apps (including web-sites).

[HolyCowCm]

Just goes to show that not everyone in the military loves this Regime and the percent is maybe greater than what it look like. Just what I thought for years already.

[Syrus]

Cyberpunk is a literature genre, not a person or a form of hacking.

[Karolyn]

14 hours ago, Syrus said:

Cyberpunk is a literature genre, not a person or a form of hacking.

Like a Ghost in the Shell plot though, no?