Via Middle East Times -
OSLO -- Internet hackers have stolen confidential data on 60,000 Norwegians, including the head of the agency for safeguarding them, the agency itself revealed Friday.
It said that they had used a weakness on the Web site of the telephone operators Tele2 to procure the national personal identity numbers and addresses of subscribers, amounting to 1.3 percent of the country's population.
The information would enable the hackers to change the addresses of the people concerned so as to intercept their mail, or order goods on their account.
The head of the date protection agency, Georg Apenes, was surprised to receive in the post a new chip for his mobile telephone from an operator to which he had not subscribed.
Agency official Gunnel Helmer said, "We hope that this time someone just wanted to highlight the ease with which identities can be stolen on the Internet.
"The weaknesses can be exploited of sites which try to be ever simpler to use, and automatically show up the memorized details of individuals to save having to type them out."
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Is Gunnel Helmer off his rocker or what? Does he really think that a friendly group of "concerned citizens \ good guys" was just trying to help the agency out? Really? I always like to go out and help those in need when it could result in me going to jail for a very long time....
While "hope" is a good thing to have.......it is not a valid security mechanism.
Regardless of the intent of the hackers, it is has happened and that can not be reversed...so now this theft should be viewed by the data protection agency as a single unsuccessful battle of a ongoing war for secure personal data storage. No system is 100% secure and a system that is being used requires constant work to keep it relatively secure.
This incident is also a good way to get funds from the government to hire real good guys to help you....
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