Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 05 2018, @03:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the put-it-in-the-cloud-what-could-go-wrong dept.

For a long time in Australia when you purchased property you had to visit the local Land Titles office or local equivalent to pay your stamp duty and get paperwork done. Recently several state governments decided to outsource this critical function to a private company, the Property Exchange Australia - PEXA. It was seen as a win-win with a private company taking over storing and maintaining land titles and the State Governments getting a kick back for it. Until it all went wrong recently when $250,000 was stolen from a PEXA conveyancer's account.

The victim of the hack was Dani Venn, who is well known for being on the local version of Masterchef. PEXA has claimed no responsibility for the loss and with the PEXA system soon to be made mandatory in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, many people are concerned that the system is not secure and should not be used for title or money transfers. While the Commonwealth Bank was able to freeze and recover 138K of the funds, 110K is still missing leaving Ms Venn in the lurch. PEXA has claimed to be taking action to secure the service.

While PEXA has claimed that their online system will be of benefit to lawyers, sellers, buyers and real estate agents, the reality of moving data out of offline systems to internet based servers may very well have just created the sweetest honeypot ever seen online in Australia.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday July 05 2018, @05:35AM (4 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 05 2018, @05:35AM (#702861) Journal

    The difference is often in the contract.

    I wish it would be that simple.
    Being awarded a digital services contract by a government is a dangerous proposition most of the time - it creates a "de facto monopoly" commercial entity.
    Someone says "commercial monopoly"? Where's the interest to give more than mediocre services, the money come anyway?

    The money don't come because the contract is broken? Heh, they fill for liquidation and still keep your data captive (if you are lucky not to be wiped out in the process).

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:12AM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:12AM (#702870) Journal
    Which is why you write in the contract that they are required to keep all their data in a specific format you can read, on servers you can access, and to destroy any and all other copies of said data upon termination of the contract.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:22AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 05 2018, @06:22AM (#702873) Journal

      ... or else?
      Objectively, what can you do to them once they file for bankruptcy?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Thursday July 05 2018, @07:10AM (1 child)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Thursday July 05 2018, @07:10AM (#702891) Journal

        Accenture are the "Business Partner" running the Australian Electronic Health Record. Luckily, the data is (contractually required) to be held in Australian, on-shore data centres (main and back ups)

        Property data has no such protection:
        PEXA has moved their data onto AWS... techworld.com.au/article/643399/pexa-ascends-cloud

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:43PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 05 2018, @02:43PM (#702993)

          They are? OMFG Accidenture really suck. We are screwed :(