12 ms·

This is ridiculous. It's not just Danish personal identification numbers, but ID numbers and health records for everyone who have lived in Denmark from 2010 thr

This is ridiculous. It's not just Danish personal identification numbers, but ID numbers and health records for everyone who have lived in Denmark from 2010 through 2012. Quick recap since it's in Danish: A danish health authority, SSI, accidentally mailed two CDs containing unencrypted CPR-numbers and health records for 5.28m residents to the Chinese Visa Application Office. The Chinese delivered the letter to the intended recipient, Statistics Denmark, another danish government authority. The bubble cushioned mailer containing the CDs had been opened, but regardless the issue of course is the extremely reckless handling of very sensitive information. Edit: Article reporting on this in English http://www.thelocal.dk/20160720/five-million-danish-id-numbers-sent-to-chinese-firm-by-mistake http://www.thelocal.dk/20160720/five-million-danish-id-numbe... Edit 2: The specification and structure of the data that was sent with these CDs. https://twitter.com/christianpanton/status/755742230044966912 https://twitter.com/christianpanton/status/75574223004496691... (also in Danish, but this seems to include almost everything; the carelessness in handling this data appears to have been surpassed only by the extent and completeness of it)

tixzdk 10y ago
And the letter, which was sent as priority mail, had been opened when they went to retrieve it...
- hooph00p 10y ago
  Now they must assume that information is compromised and take action.
  - danielweber 10y ago
    Which is what? Give every Dane a new health record?
    - OJFord 10y ago
      I read that to mean _legal_ action. IANAL, and can't profess to any knowledge whatsoever of Danish law, but opening a package clearly addressed to someone else without permission may be reasonable grounds for litigation. Though to the question "what good will that do", you're right, it's not like new health records can be issued. Depending on the details of what was shared and what ties them to an individual though, I suppose it might be possible to issue new IDs.
  - erk__ 10y ago
    They wrote that they do not belive that there was a compromise of the data.
    - danieldk 10y ago
      So? An unencrypted CD was accessible for a time period to a third party. It's good security practice to consider the data to be compromised. Especially a powerful, malicious actor will put in effort to make it appear that this is not the case. If anything, this requires a severe audit of the security practices of the affected organisations. Moreover, I think citizens of Denmark are entitled to know what information about their personal health records is leaked.
Svip 10y ago
Correction: SSI sent a letter containing two unencrypted CDs containing CPR-numbers and health records for 5.28 residents in Danish municipals between 2010 and 2012 to the Danish statistics agency (Statistics Denmark). Post Danmark (postal service) accidentally delivered the letter to Chinese Visa Application Centre instead. When the employee responsible for receiving the letter noticed the mistake upon opening, the employee turned the letter with the two CDs to Statistics Denmark. According to the employee's story, this was done immediately. And the investigation team says they have no reason to doubt the validity of her story. To sum up: The investigation team believe that the Chinese Visa Application Centre never actually saw the contents on the CDs. SSI sent the data unencrypted, and the postal service delivered the letter to the wrong recipient. Edit: Changed wording from blaming the postal service.
- throwanem 10y ago
  How long does a modern machine need to copy off the contents of a couple of CDs? Were the discs in tamper-evident packages?
  - Svip 10y ago
    No long, I'd imagine. But again there is little to no way to figure out for sure whether the Chinese government has this information. The story really highlights the careless handling of data, because the chances of the Chinese government (or any other third part) getting access to these data is way too high.
    - pilif 10y ago
      > But again there is little to no way to figure out for sure whether the Chinese government has this information assume they have it.
      - seszett 10y ago
        Let's assume they have it. What kind of interest would you say the Chinese government has in the health records of a few million Danish residents? I don't know, maybe it's really important, but then maybe it's not that critical after all.
silvestrov 10y ago
> 5.28m residents Denmark has a population of 5.7m residents, so this is almost all Danes.
Freak_NL 10y ago
This happens more than you think, although not usually at this scale and this high up in the chain. When a care institution needs to communicate with one of their vendors handling health records about a problem with a specific person's record, most IT-workers at those institutions tend to just mail all details they feel are relevant to the issue without even considering encryption or the necessity of sending all that data over the wire. The use of physical post here was probably a good thing all things considered! They could just as easy have used WeTransfer or some other cloud solution — when it comes to security best practices people are very good at downplaying the potential risk, even when legislation does acknowledge it and forbids such treatment of sensitive personal information.
- danielweber 10y ago
  > most IT-workers at those institutions tend to just mail all details they feel are relevant to the issue Not necessarily disbelieving you, but why do you say this? Every place I've worked or contracted at with PII, I've had to sit through training about not doing this, and management provided tools for proper handling. I don't mean to say that because there are policies that no one ever breaks them. I've also encountered places where what was encouraged on the ground was different than what was listed in policy.
  - Freak_NL 10y ago
    I work for a SaaS vendor of health care record software. From what I have seen care institutions (as opposed to hospitals) do not have the experience or staff in-house to facilitate proper security procedures. The problem as I see it lies not in the routine operations that have a high degree of visibility in the organisation and tend to have strict policies surrounding them because they are anticipated, but in the exceptions, such as key users or the IT support responsible for the service they use reporting issues to the vendor.
return0 10y ago
That's like the entire Danish population. Also, who sends CDs these days?
sctb 10y ago
Thanks, we updated the link from https://www.datatilsynet.dk/afgoerelser/afgoerelsen/artikel/anbefalet-brev-afleveret-til-en-forkert-modtager/ https://www.datatilsynet.dk/afgoerelser/afgoerelsen/artikel/....
flexie 10y ago
Just to give some perspective: These are the confidential ID numbers and health records, including for example psychiatric information, of more than 90 percent of the Danish population. It's not legal, but many organisations still trust you are, who you say you are, if you provide name and the ID number. You can still call some banks in Denmark and get information on the account balance if you state name, account number and the ID number. Same with the tax authorities and some public authorities. The health records are likely to include information that can be used to blackmail our politicians, business people etc. since just about everybody in Denmark uses the public health care system.
- bertil 10y ago
  Are ID numbers confidential in Denmark? They (personnumer) seem fairly widely shared in Sweden and Finland.
  - flexie 10y ago
    They are confidential in Denmark, or rather they were supposed to be.
    - slau 10y ago
      Considering everyone and their cousin has your CPR number over here, I fail to see how it could be seen as confidential. My landlord has my CPR, my company has my CPR, my network operator has my CPR, and my language school has my CPR. Not knowing my CPR has never been a problem, but knowing it has never been an advantage. It's a unique ID as a citizen, but that's as far as it goes. Every time I call my bank, I have to give the amount of cash available on my account for them to "authenticate" me, or tell them when was the last time I logged on to the website.
    - kwhitefoot 10y ago
      They used to be regarded as confidential here in Norway but that has been rather de-emphasised in recent years. But you won't get anywhere asking for information from a bank if you only have the account and personnummer because all the banks here require two factor authentication, as far as I know.

tixzdk 10y ago

And the letter, which was sent as priority mail, had been opened when they went to retrieve it...

hooph00p 10y ago
Now they must assume that information is compromised and take action.
- danielweber 10y ago
  Which is what? Give every Dane a new health record?
  - OJFord 10y ago
    I read that to mean _legal_ action. IANAL, and can't profess to any knowledge whatsoever of Danish law, but opening a package clearly addressed to someone else without permission may be reasonable grounds for litigation. Though to the question "what good will that do", you're right, it's not like new health records can be issued. Depending on the details of what was shared and what ties them to an individual though, I suppose it might be possible to issue new IDs.
- erk__ 10y ago
  They wrote that they do not belive that there was a compromise of the data.
  - danieldk 10y ago
    So? An unencrypted CD was accessible for a time period to a third party. It's good security practice to consider the data to be compromised. Especially a powerful, malicious actor will put in effort to make it appear that this is not the case. If anything, this requires a severe audit of the security practices of the affected organisations. Moreover, I think citizens of Denmark are entitled to know what information about their personal health records is leaked.

Svip 10y ago

Correction: SSI sent a letter containing two unencrypted CDs containing CPR-numbers and health records for 5.28 residents in Danish municipals between 2010 and 2012 to the Danish statistics agency (Statistics Denmark). Post Danmark (postal service) accidentally delivered the letter to Chinese Visa Application Centre instead. When the employee responsible for receiving the letter noticed the mistake upon opening, the employee turned the letter with the two CDs to Statistics Denmark. According to the employee's story, this was done immediately. And the investigation team says they have no reason to doubt the validity of her story. To sum up: The investigation team believe that the Chinese Visa Application Centre never actually saw the contents on the CDs. SSI sent the data unencrypted, and the postal service delivered the letter to the wrong recipient. Edit: Changed wording from blaming the postal service.

throwanem 10y ago
How long does a modern machine need to copy off the contents of a couple of CDs? Were the discs in tamper-evident packages?
- Svip 10y ago
  No long, I'd imagine. But again there is little to no way to figure out for sure whether the Chinese government has this information. The story really highlights the careless handling of data, because the chances of the Chinese government (or any other third part) getting access to these data is way too high.
  - pilif 10y ago
    > But again there is little to no way to figure out for sure whether the Chinese government has this information assume they have it.
    - seszett 10y ago
      Let's assume they have it. What kind of interest would you say the Chinese government has in the health records of a few million Danish residents? I don't know, maybe it's really important, but then maybe it's not that critical after all.

silvestrov 10y ago

> 5.28m residents Denmark has a population of 5.7m residents, so this is almost all Danes.

Freak_NL 10y ago

This happens more than you think, although not usually at this scale and this high up in the chain. When a care institution needs to communicate with one of their vendors handling health records about a problem with a specific person's record, most IT-workers at those institutions tend to just mail all details they feel are relevant to the issue without even considering encryption or the necessity of sending all that data over the wire. The use of physical post here was probably a good thing all things considered! They could just as easy have used WeTransfer or some other cloud solution — when it comes to security best practices people are very good at downplaying the potential risk, even when legislation does acknowledge it and forbids such treatment of sensitive personal information.

danielweber 10y ago
> most IT-workers at those institutions tend to just mail all details they feel are relevant to the issue Not necessarily disbelieving you, but why do you say this? Every place I've worked or contracted at with PII, I've had to sit through training about not doing this, and management provided tools for proper handling. I don't mean to say that because there are policies that no one ever breaks them. I've also encountered places where what was encouraged on the ground was different than what was listed in policy.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  I work for a SaaS vendor of health care record software. From what I have seen care institutions (as opposed to hospitals) do not have the experience or staff in-house to facilitate proper security procedures. The problem as I see it lies not in the routine operations that have a high degree of visibility in the organisation and tend to have strict policies surrounding them because they are anticipated, but in the exceptions, such as key users or the IT support responsible for the service they use reporting issues to the vendor.

return0 10y ago

That's like the entire Danish population. Also, who sends CDs these days?

sctb 10y ago

Thanks, we updated the link from https://www.datatilsynet.dk/afgoerelser/afgoerelsen/artikel/anbefalet-brev-afleveret-til-en-forkert-modtager/ https://www.datatilsynet.dk/afgoerelser/afgoerelsen/artikel/....

flexie 10y ago

Just to give some perspective: These are the confidential ID numbers and health records, including for example psychiatric information, of more than 90 percent of the Danish population. It's not legal, but many organisations still trust you are, who you say you are, if you provide name and the ID number. You can still call some banks in Denmark and get information on the account balance if you state name, account number and the ID number. Same with the tax authorities and some public authorities. The health records are likely to include information that can be used to blackmail our politicians, business people etc. since just about everybody in Denmark uses the public health care system.

bertil 10y ago
Are ID numbers confidential in Denmark? They (personnumer) seem fairly widely shared in Sweden and Finland.
- flexie 10y ago
  They are confidential in Denmark, or rather they were supposed to be.
  - slau 10y ago
    Considering everyone and their cousin has your CPR number over here, I fail to see how it could be seen as confidential. My landlord has my CPR, my company has my CPR, my network operator has my CPR, and my language school has my CPR. Not knowing my CPR has never been a problem, but knowing it has never been an advantage. It's a unique ID as a citizen, but that's as far as it goes. Every time I call my bank, I have to give the amount of cash available on my account for them to "authenticate" me, or tell them when was the last time I logged on to the website.
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    They used to be regarded as confidential here in Norway but that has been rather de-emphasised in recent years. But you won't get anywhere asking for information from a bank if you only have the account and personnummer because all the banks here require two factor authentication, as far as I know.