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from the don't-even-think-about-editing-the-URL dept.
Confused governor says looking at webpage's HTML is criminal hacking:
Gov. Mike Parson is sick and tired of all these sophisticated, no-good hackers and he's not going to take it any more. It's too bad the Missouri Republican has no idea what he's talking about.
During a Thursday press conference, the confused elected official lashed out at a journalist who reported a vulnerability in an official Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website. The reporter, notably, waited until officials fixed the error before publishing the story. The flaw? The website apparently included teachers' Social Security numbers in the HTML.
"Though no private information was clearly visible nor searchable on any of the web pages, the newspaper found that teachers' Social Security numbers were contained in the HTML source code of the pages involved," reported the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Parson, who apparently has never heard of "view source," obliquely threatened the Post reporter with prosecution.
"The state is committing to bring to justice anyone who hacked our system and anyone who aided or encouraged them to do so — in accordance with what Missouri law allows AND requires," wrote Parson.
[... - plenty snipped - ...] Parson, in other words, has no idea what he's talking about.
canopic jug augments that with the following other sources:
Governor Mike Parson wishes that ctrl-u or f12 will become illegal. This was actually a breach of personal information, including SSANs, for over 100,000 people.
https://text.npr.org/1046124278
https://www.salon.com/2021/10/14/missouri-governor-threatens-criminal-prosecution-of-reporter-found-security-flaw-in-state-site_partner/
https://itwire.com/security/missouri-goes-after-man-who-looked-at-source-code-on-state-site.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/missouri-governor-teacher-data-hacking-1242493/
https://coldstreams.com/2021/10/14/no-it-isnt-missouri-governor-says-viewing-html-source-code-containing-private-data-the-state-published-on-every-page-is-a-crime/
https://abc17news.com/news/missouri/2021/10/14/gov-parson-threatens-legal-action-against-reporter-who-exposed-flaw-on-state-education-departments-website/
https://heavy.com/news/gov-mike-parson-html-source-code-decoded-ssn/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:28AM (2 children)
When a person is deceased. The pools of available SSNs are not actually sufficient to cover every person in America past, present, or future. That said, normally they are issued out in blocks, geographically and then regionally so nowadays there should not be many duplicates happening. However back in the day thanks to clerical errors it was possible that SSN ranges got reused before one party died, or go double used by two people in adjacent areas (or rarely different states).
So yeah while the SSN was MEANT to be a unique identifier for tax purposes, it has in effect never been a definitively unique identifier.
(Score: 4, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday October 19 2021, @01:04AM (1 child)
BULL. SHIT.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html [ssa.gov]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday October 19 2021, @03:25AM
I'm not so sure about "generations to come". 9 digits means exactly 1 billion possible SS Numbers (including the invalid ones) , meaning Americans alive *today* are using roughly 1/3 of all possible numbers, While everyone who got a SS number since 1936 and subsequently died has removed numbers from the pool. We've probably got fewer never-used SS numbers available than there are currently-active numbers, and will need to revise the system within a few decades. Aka 1 to 2 generations.