Missouri Governor Vows to Prosecute St. Louis Post-Dispatch for Reporting Security Vulnerability
Summary: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a Missouri state education website exposed the Social Security numbers of 100,000 elementary and secondary teachers in the HTML source code of pages used to search teacher certifications. Gov. Mike Parson said fixing the flaw could cost the state $50 million and vowed to prosecute and investigate the reporter and the newspaper, while the Post-Dispatch said it held its story until the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education removed the affected pages.
Why it matters: A governor is threatening criminal prosecution of a newsroom that reported a flaw exposing 100,000 teachers' SSNs and waited for the state to fix it before publishing, which the EFF's Aaron Mackey says will give pause to anyone who finds and reports vulnerabilities in state systems - leaving them to be found by actual criminals instead.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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