Government breach their own data protection act

[fergusw]

It was simple password protection
i.e. Their date of birth or name or something suitably moronic and simple for a brute force dictionary hack to bypass in a matter of seconds.

There was ZERO encryption. Their procedure is apparently to never post this information, yet there have been 3 or 4 very serious breaches of security and data protection at HM Customs recently.

It's all in a bit of a mess. They are under staffed, over stressed, badly managed and mistakes are being made!

Ggrrrrrrrrr *sound of blood boiling*

[los_design]

anybody wondered how much capacity these discs would have to hold 25m worth of data? Specially built for HMRC

don't they have network sharing?

why was he downloading them?

or is this a government conspiracy to take the public eye of the ball regarding a high profile trial they rather did not happen

eeeeeeeeeeek......

[Duncan Rounding]

Doesn't this just sound too ridiculous to be true though.

What's the odds on a packet going missing that just happens to contain the whole of the whole of the Family Credit records? I mean I wonder how many other packets go missing between the two buildings?

How come someone then waited about three weeks to report it missing? I'm surprised that anyone would report it as missing at all.

Makes me wonder...

[fergusw]

I mean I wonder how many other packets go missing between the two buildings?

You can bet your life that it wouldn't be the chairman's pay packet that went missing.

People are saying that the chairman (Paul Gray) did the honourable thing and resigned! Personally I think that's a bit of a cowards way out.
Yes, those responsible should no longer be allowed to be responsible i.e. sacked, but they have to at least be held to account, explain why things went wrong and shop all those involved in these huge breaches of security by the government before being let off the hook!
</ end another rant>

[gabrielcrowe]

0 packets can go missing. TCP is fault tolerant to that kind of thing.

it does not stop someone with wireshark or etherreal tapping the packets off however.

this is an academic point, you'll find lax protocols for all the government practices. its fairly common for high ranking officials to have their passwords postit stuck to their monitors.

its the inherent lazyness of peoples.

[plantsforshade]

We telephoned the bank and changed all the account details last evening because we get the child allowance for our young ones paid into our house account, the bank HSBC said they had been snowed under with people changing there's all day.

Must add up to a huge cost.

Regards

Nigel

[Duncan Rounding]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11..._ebay_auction/