Posted on 02/08/2018 2:16:36 PM PST by MeganC
Last month, a local California newspaper left more than 19 million voter records exposed online. Gizmodo confirmed this week that the records were compromised during an apparent ransomware attack.
The Sacramento Bee said in a statement that a firewall protecting its database was not restored during routine maintenance last month, leaving the 19,501,258 voter files publicly accessible. Additionally, the names, home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of 52,873 Sacramento Bee subscribers were compromised.
“We take this incident seriously and have begun efforts to notify each of the individuals on the contact list and to provide them resources to help guard against potential misuse of their personal contact information,” the paper said in a statement. “We are also working with the Secretary of State’s office to share with them the details of this intrusion.”
The Kromtech Security Center first discovered the data on January 31st and reviewed records from several of the exposed databases before determining who owned the data. Kromtech reached out immediately to multiple employees in the Bee’s IT department but received no response.
Gizmodo was notified about the breach on February 2nd and reached out to an executive editor at the Bee. Our email was not returned. After emailing two other members of the Bee’s editorial board on Monday—including Gary Wortel, the paper’s president and publisher—Gizmodo was contacted by a public relations director at The McClatchy Company, the Bee’s owner.
A McClatchy spokesperson said the executive editor first contacted by Gizmodo had left the paper day our email was sent.
McClatchy provided an initial statement on Tuesday, saying it had “strict protocols in place to ensure the security of our data” and that it was “aware of a ransomware attack on one of our servers that was located outside our core IT structure.” The spokesperson added: “We know that in databases apparently targeted, no personally identifiable information, as defined by the State of California, was involved.”
Below is a sample of a leaked voter record, with personal information redacted. It contains the voter’s name, phone number, address, gender, date of birth, political affiliation, among other election-related details.
(More at the link)
“The SacBee released the 19 million plus records that are available to the public???”
AND the personal/confidential information of their pitiful 52,000 subscribers.
Crazy, isn’t it?
Which brings up the question:
Would you rather be a proctologist's lawyer, or a lawyer's proctologist?
Discuss.
“So what is the Sac Bee doing with 19 million voting records anyway?”
The question to ask is how did the Bee get those records in a single database when the Federal government could not?
What was the Bee doing with the records in the first place?
Was this a sting?
I thought those were private records.
Well, you’re a professional so, they wouldn’t let you have it...
They already do...
Great. All ten of us Republicans in California are going to have crazies trying to firebomb our houses now. Oh well, once they dispatch us, the state will be pure as the Aryan Race.
Oh, yeah. I’ve done more firewall and server upgrades than I can count, and there was always one highly technical question we used to like to answer for the boss at the end: “Duh, is it still working?” I mean, come on, guys...
The voter registration rolls (lists of registered voters) are not available to the general public. However, California law allows certain voter information to be released to a member of the California Legislature or U.S. Congress, or to any candidate, any committee for or against a proposed ballot measure, any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, or political purpose, or for governmental purposes. Even in these cases, your social security number, driver license number, and signature will remain confidential.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/administration/privacy-policy/
The first step should be to fire the IT guy who left the door open - let him choose whether he wants the termination to be for malfeasance or incompetence - then fire his boss. Then conduct an investigation as to who else needs firing.
Another reason not to subscribe to newspapers.
Oh, and it will be interesting to see how many folks go the polls next year claiming to be Hugh Hefner.
“a legitimate or legal reason.” —> I’ll hazard a guess that it is for election reporting. It allows them to do all sorts of statistical analyses comparing actual vote tallies to registered voters.
It’s crazy that they had that information.
California must be the king of illegal voting, too.
Or for target marketing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.