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Does anyone have context on what the newspaper “hacked”? The video implies that some teachers’ SSNs were in plaintext on the HTML of a government site, I believ
by wanderingstan 5y ago
Does anyone have context on what the newspaper “hacked”? The video implies that some teachers’ SSNs were in plaintext on the HTML of a government site, I believe.
- hirundo 5y agoRight, the SSNs were in plaintext in the html code, and the reporter is a "hacker" for looking at in the browser, reporting the problem to the state, and then to the public. I wonder if browser makers are complicit for including the source view feature.
- nsriv 5y agoPreviously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946392
- dredmorbius 5y agoIn the incident that enraged Parson, a Post-Dispatch reporter found that Social Security numbers for teachers, administrators and counselors was visible in the HTML code of a publicly accessible site operated by the state education department. HTML code is the programming that tells the computer how to display a web page. The newspaper informed the state of the problem and promised not to publish any story until the issue was fixed. https://missouriindependent.com/2021/10/21/parson-doubles-down-on-push-to-prosecute-reporter-who-found-security-flaw-in-state-site/ https://missouriindependent.com/2021/10/21/parson-doubles-do...
- jml7c5 5y agoI have seen some claims that the data was base64-encoded, but I can't find any confirmation of it.
- DarthNebo 5y agoThat isn't encryption though, it's just a transformation. More on Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64