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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.

5 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Seriously? by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Some pretty descriptive quotes from the linked article:

    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.
  2. Marketers subscribe by tigersha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > ..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
  3. Re:Old news? by e5150 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The crime she committed ("Recklessness with secret documents") carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison (BrB 19 kap. Â9). And altough I wouldn't mind seeing her spending some time behind bars, after having read (the redacted, non-juicy, parts of) the Secret service investigastion, I wouldn't really put the blame on her.
    The whole mess started before she was appointed director of the agency, she seems to basically have been brought in and told: "Sign these documents, otherwise the outsourcing is gonna be delayed even further".
    I would like to see a lot more heads roll before this story gets filed away.

  4. Re:This is why the US need a smaller government... by Immerman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    $#@! '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.
  5. Re:I see how it is by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Informative

    Even worse - the responsible people were told that the transfer was even an illegal move by the internal revision people of that department but they moved ahead anyway. Responsible ministers kept silent and didn't even inform the prime minister of this.

    Nothing less than a public flogging would be suitable.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.