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Oops: World Leaders' Personal Data Mistakenly Released By Autofill Error
mpicpp writes in with this story about a mistake that saw personal details of world leaders accidentally disclosed by the Australian immigration department. "With a single key stroke, the personal information of President Obama and 30 other world leaders was mistakenly released by an official with Australia's immigration office. Passport numbers, dates of birth, and other personal information of the heads of state attending a G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, were inadvertently emailed to one of the organizers of January's Asian Cup football tournament, according to The Guardian. The U.K. newspaper obtained the information as a result of an Australia Freedom of Information request. Aside from President Obama, leaders whose data were released include Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese President Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister David Cameron. The sender forgot to check the auto-fill function in the email 'To' field in Microsoft Outlook before hitting send, the BBC reports."
Yes, I am called Barack Obama. Can't you see that in these forge... authentic papers? I just travel economy, as that is the most cost-sensitive solution!
Amusing as this is, most of it (perhaps not passport numbers -- but how hard can it be to get a new passport as a head of state) is already public information.
I'd tell a UDP joke, but you may not get it. I'd tell a TCP joke, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it.
"Outlook not so good."
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When their privacy is violated, it makes headlines.
When they violate ours, it's business as usual.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It was mostly only metadata.
This is the equivalent to the periodic scenario where HR accidentally emails the spreadsheet with everyone's salary numbers to the Everyone list.
And yes, back in the days I was an email administrator, I had to try and do damage control on someone who had actually done that. Twice. Others probably have similar stories.
Actually, it's gotten better now, ironically, now that all that stuff is stored in some cloud app. Now the people just have accounts that they can run their own reports from. Of course, in smaller, or less tech savvy businesses, people are probably still passing those sorts of spreadsheets via email even today.
personal information of the heads of state attending a G-20 summit [...] British Prime Minister David Cameron
A minor consitutional note, but David Cameron isn't a head of state. Queen Elizabeth is, but she doesn't have a passport, as they're issued in her name, and in any case she can just flash a tenner at passport control as ID, or just say "I'm the bloody queen, mate" and be done with it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
can volunteer for a suicide mission and get Putin removed from office.......
It's interesting for a couple of reasons. Given that the sender intended to send the details somewhere, I'd be really interested to know who the intended recipient was and for what reason.
Even more interesting, I never quite realised that heads of state would have (or then use), a passport. Surely no one actually checks it? I mean, I was once stuck in an immigration queue at JFK behind Paddy Ashdown, just after he stopped being something like the NATO-imposed governor of Bosnia and was an ordinary human again. He was relaxed, but his diminutive aide was not happy that Lord Ashdown had to wait. Fascinating people watching. But a proper bona-fide head of state?
There is never a situation where autofill makes sense, in any application, it is a security liability on several levels. All the browsers are guilty of enabling it by default, password management services try to make you use it, email clients use it... it is inappropriate in every single situation.
I hope this event helps make that clear to major software developers. Autofill should NEVER be enabled by default and the user should be warned of its dangers when they enable it.
has forked Linux kernel achieved sentience. World ends. Game over fuckers
OK, so the summary makes it sound like the Guardian got a copy of the personal information via a FOI request, which would make no sense. "Welp, we sent it in an email. Guess we have to release it now if anyone asks." In fact what happened is they learned about the breach through a FOI request, though I'm not sure how they knew to make the request.
The only thing more annoying than a computer is a computer that tries to be helpful.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well than, let's see your birth certificate!
Which one of Barrack Obama's - if that is his real name - birthdates and social security numbers were released? He is known to have stated several different at various times.
The message included the 31 world leaders' dates of birth but not personal addresses and other contact details.
Good.... who knows what could have happened if people knew where these world leaders lived.
Sorry I forgot the one rule for them exclusion!
The Immigration Department described the incident as an "isolated example of human error" and said the risk of the breach to be "very low", given data such as addresses was not included.
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
10 Downing St.
Sure, no addresses makes it all better...
No matter how much training, security measures, or mail filtering......
You can't fix stupid.
All autocompletes I have ever seen are completely awful and generally worse than nothing at all. Putting words together is, like, the one thing we humans are good at? So I am at a loss as to why we seem so addicted to this ridiculous kind of software.
Forget the auto-complete nonsense. The question that should be being asked is why an un-encrypted email containing " Passport numbers, dates of birth, and other personal information of the heads of state attending a G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia" would be being sent to ANYONE. I can't even send an unencrypted email at work containing MY OWN social security number.
These information are mostly available in the public domain already. So what's the big deal about the leak?
This is the big question I have: What in hell was the Immigration Dept. Doing with this information to begin with? Shouldn't all of that have been handled by the Diplomatic Dept Dips?
What about their luggage combination?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Any chance the escaped information included Obama's university transcripts?
That information is useless: you are not going to impersonate Obama because you have his passport number.
By the way I am surprised diplomatic missions have to show a passport.
I'm pretty sure that post was written by a markov chain generator using a combination of fox news and slashdot as it's data set
The "World Leaders" Ha Ha Hoy Hoy, what walking Jokes!
Now their personnel bank accounts can be compromised in Hilarious ways.
Fun Fun Fun
Example: Telephone communication from IRS to White House Barak Obama (NSA coping all transmissions).
IRS: President Obama, please excuse me Sir, but in your 2014 Taxation report you claimed 14,000 Women Sex Slaves in Kenya. Would you like to comment, on the record as this transmission is being recorded, Sir.
Ha ha
I encountered a bug once in Outlook where I did fill in the name, autocompleted it correctly but still Outlook sent it to the wrong person behind my back.
Luckily the person receiving the mail wasn't a security breach.
So I don't trust Outlook much since then.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Autofill errors have happened on Voting machines too. it filled in the ballot with the last guys ballot.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So the data leaked, is that secret or just personal?
So the story goes they accidentally sent the email to the asian cup organisers when the autofill picked the wrong entry.
So they would have type 'a' 's' 'i' and then autofilled?
Sounds like they were sending the email to ASI...O
Luckily the guy didn't email those world-leaders with all the recipients in the to: field, they would 'reply all' for the next 20 years and nothing would get done.
What I want to know is do Angela Merkel's documents show that her real father was Adolf Hitler?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Isn't everyone missing the real issue here? It's not that someone mis-addressed an email. It's not that Outlook helped them mess up. It's not that it was leaders' information.
It's the fact that they were sending this kind of information about anyone in clear text, on an email, at all, to anyone.