South Korean Citizen IDs Vulnerable, Based On US Model

An anonymous reader writes: South Korea's Resident Registration Number (RRN) has been proven 'vulnerable to almost any adversary' by the 'Queen of re-identification', Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney, who previously proved that 87 percent of all Americans could be uniquely identified using just their ZIP code, birthdate, and sex. Sweeney was able to decrypt personal information from the RRN numbers of 23,163 deceased Koreans with 100% success by two different methods of attack, and notes that the South Korean system is based on one currently in use in the U.S.

Comments

Re:What's so secret about those numbers?

[gl4ss]

yeah it's there, so what? it's not a secret, it's not meant to be a secret. the documents detailing your health as you were born are supposed to be confidential, not the fact that you were born with a dick.

and there's countries that have citizens who have lived for generations there but don't have any id, number or even official citizenship to act as a citizen and without the usual human rights to boot.

I don't see what's so great about that.

having an unique to you social security number is handy. it doesn't need to be a secret, when you use it your id is verified by other means - just trusting a string of numbers that stays the SAME through your whole life and is given to countless officials staying secret is so fucking stupid to begin with that it's just a present for ID thieves.

and really, you don't even give it away that often(the ssn in nordic countries).