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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens (thehackernews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military's most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever.
In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what's terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.
In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what's terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.
Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM's entire database onto cloud servers
The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it.
were sent in clear text
error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list
every conceivable top secret database: fighter pilots, SEAL team operators, police suspects, people under witness relocation.
One of the multiple questions coming to my mind after reading all this is: why are so different types of top-level secret information of a country being stored in the same database?!
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
> ..the transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it.
This sentence makes no sense. What did the marketers subscribe to? The top secret database??!! This must have been quite a large database, I doubt that you can attach and mail it. Who mailed what to whom?
The whole article reads like something Google translate did on a day when the server was drunk or half asleep.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
You joke, but when a corporation screws up, you can sue it, you can quit buying their products, you can convince your friends to stop supporting it.
When the government screws up, you're stuck with it (short of revolution). In fact the way a lot of government union employment contracts are structured, you can't even fire the people responsible for the screwup.
I've never bought into the claim that all government is good and all corporations bad. Nor have I bought into the claim that all corporations are good and all government is bad. Both can do good things, both can do bad things. The trick is figuring out which things one tends to do better than the other, and giving the job to the more capable entity.
For as long as I could remember, Sweden was portrayed as one of the best places to live, and one of the most capable of nations. It had prosperity, almost non-existent crime, and despite having a relatively small population it punched far above its weight in many scientific, technological and artistic fields.
When the name "Sweden" appeared in a news article's headline, chances are whatever the article was focusing on was going to be extremely positive.
But that has all changed.
Now the name "Sweden" has become associated with "no-go zones" like the Rinkeby district and the Husby district, a huge increase in grenade attacks, the 2013 Stockholm riots, and the 7 April 2017 truck attack in Stockholm.
Now there is this incident.
What's happening to Sweden? Is it a prime example of what happens when political and social leftism runs rampant, destroying the institutions and culture of a nation? Is what's happening in Sweden the fate of any nation that brings in people from the worst of the worst third-world nations?
When the government screws up, you're stuck with it (short of revolution).
I don't know where you live but around here we have these things called elections which let us change governments without all the shooting, rioting and deaths of a typical revolution. You should try them, they aren't fantastic but they are a lot better than the alternative.
$#@! 'em. And good on you for finding something that tilts the tide and sticking to it. Any idiot can get fast, satisfying results for a little while - it takes determination and vision to accept that what took years to put on will take years to take off. Best of luck in maintaining your vision and embracing your needed lifestyle changes.
An old friend of mine had a sailing metaphor philosophy on life - as long as you can keep trending in the right direction you'll get where you want to go. The important thing is to keep your hand on the wheel and not let yourself get discouraged when you occasionally get blown off course.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.