Huge Canada Passport breach ‘resolved’
People worried that a massive security breach on Passport Canada’s web site main mean that they personal and private information might be used online crooks need have no fear, says Passport Canada.
Trying to play down the breach, which came to light when a curious passport applicant noticed that by changing a few numbers in the URL of his own online application you could suddenly see other applications’ submissions, the agency believes the breach was an “isolated anomaly,” according to abien Lengelle, a Passport Canada spokesman quoted by the National Post.
“We’ve looked at it and we’ve resolved the issue,” he’s stating. “So it’s no longer possible for a user to get applicant information through Passport Online,” he said, referring to the site where individuals can apply for passports online.”
Meanwhile, “I’m just curious about these things so I tried it, and boom, there was somebody else’s name and somebody else’s data,” as well as social insurance numbers, driver’s licence numbers and addresses, says Jamie Laning in the Globe and Mail.
“Also available were home and business phone numbers, a federal ID card number and even a firearms licence number,” says the story.
According to Lengelle in the National Post, the gaping security hole was an “isolated anomaly”.
New Democrat MP Brian Masse wanted foreign affairs Minister Maxime Bernier Bernier to apologize to Canadians who’d their privacy “violated” but, “Bernier said he spoke with Passport Canada officials on Tuesday morning and had been assured that the problem was fixed,” says the story, adding:
” ‘The Web site of Passport Canada is now one of the most secure,’ Mr. Bernier told the House.”
Notes the New York Times:
“The infamous data-security breach in Britain last month, where disks full of personal financial data on half the country’s households somehow got lost between offices, came down essentially to a ‘moment’s blunder’ in the mailroom — an infuriating mistake that shook the government and prompted a resignation, but nonetheless a straightforward human error.
“But the Canadian government’s data-security breach over the weekend appears to have been a much more preventable lapse.”
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