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Confused Governor Says Looking at Webpage's HTML is Criminal Hacking

posted by FatPhil on Monday October 18 2021, @08:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-even-think-about-editing-the-URL dept.

upstart writes:

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/

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @01:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @01:29PM (#1188391)

    your mechanism for understanding things is probably broken.
    I watched the same thing, and he was looking at the lady doctor, and he was pretty obviously asking whether a "cleansing" with bleach can be done. He's so incoherent in general that you can claim all kind of misunderstandings if you want to, and I'm pretty sure in that moment he was more concerned with what he looked like on camera and being delighted with how important he was.
    but believe whatever you want.