Political Party's Videoconference System Hacked, Allowed Spying On Demand

The political party heading the Quebec parliament "had its internal videoconference system hacked in what seems to be a default password hack," writes Slashdot reader courteaudotbiz , citing reports in a Canadian newspaper. "Quebec Liberals got a lesson in how not to use the internet," joked one Quebec news station, writing that the security flaw "allowed anyone to gain access to strategy meetings and watch any of the party's live video conferences; and at least one person did... According to the source it was as easy as using a commonly used password, that is often the default code that never gets changed."

While the default password has since been changed, it represents the second high-profile Canadian password screw-up, since last week in Winnipeg, "Two 14-year-old high school students managed to hack into a Bank of Montreal ATM at a super market during their lunch break using an operator's manual they found online... They notified a nearby BMO branch manager, who was nice enough to write the pair notes for being absent from school as they showed security personnel how they did it."

Comments

Incorrect summary about the bank hack

[AchilleTalon]

The BMO ATM was not hacked two weeks ago, it was hacked two YEARS ago. http://o.canada.com/news/bmo-a...

Re:Medical records

[Mashiki]

Just remember that these governments want to control all of these databases of medical records, faces, biometrics. You can see how secure that is going to be.

Gotta get around the privacy laws first, and in Canada that's much more difficult then compared to the US or even the EU. Each one of those things fall into individual areas of privacy law, in turn no government body is legally allowed to connect any of those going in turn by the privacy act. Unlike the US and many US citizens who go lulz privacy, the laws are strict enough here that even companies like Facebook have bowed down to them.