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Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website

missouriindependent.com

1–10 of 705 posts

Re: Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website

#3
From the article, it sounds like nothing even remotely questionable was done by the reporter who found the flaw:

> "According to the Post-Dispatch, one of its reporters discovered the flaw in a web application allowing the public to search teacher certifications and credentials. No private information was publicly visible, but teacher Social Security numbers were contained in HTML source code of the pages."

Re: Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website

#5
> No private information was publicly visible, but teacher Social Security numbers were contained in HTML source code of the pages.

If it was in the HTML source code, then it was publicly visible, so it is unclear what the article is trying to say.

Re: Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website

#7
post #2

Prosecuting people for responsible disclosure? This governor is a fricking idiot.

This seems to be a requirement these days for being a governor.

I understand not everyone can know everything. The fact that it is deemed unacceptable to admit not having all of the information to make an informed decision/comment where someone in a position of authority makes shit up to just sound authoritative is a sad state of affairs. It's not like being a governor is the same as posting things on an internet forum.

Re: Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website

#9
post #3

From the article, it sounds like nothing even remotely questionable was done by the reporter who found the flaw: > "According to the Post-Dispatch, one of its reporters discovered the flaw in a web application allowing the public to search teacher certifications and credentials. No private information was publicly visible, but teacher Social Security numbers were contained in HTML source code of the pages."

Oh that is so bad.

It's events and negligence like this that give credence to credentialing requirements for software engineering.

Re: Governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website

#10
post #5

> No private information was publicly visible, but teacher Social Security numbers were contained in HTML source code of the pages. If it was in the HTML source code, then it was publicly visible, so it is unclear what the article is trying to say.

To laypersons HTML comments or display:none is invisible. But I agree, this is like a blast from the 90’s when View Source was leet hacking.
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