A security breach on Chilean
government data at the end of last week ended up alarming people nationwide,
after the hacker decided to post the personal data of about 6 million Chileans
on the Internet.
The purpose of making the data
public was supposedly to make a point, and draw attention on the fact that the
country confronts with serious privacy protection issues.
The hacker, who calls himself
the Anonymous Coward, first posted the data on a Chilean technology blog, Fayerwayer.com, on
Saturday morning, and although the post had been removed by a site editor, they
still ended up on other sites, including Google’s Blogger.
Leo Priesto, the administrator
of Fayerwayer, reported the post to local authorities as soon as he discovered
it. It appears that among the Chilean residents whose data has been exposed is
one of President Michelle Bachelet’s two daughters.
Despite the prompt reaction to
remove the post, the possibility that some people may have downloaded the data still
remains, Prieto warned.
The Anonymous Coward’s posts
were accompanied by warnings that personal data in Chile is poorly protected,
and information on how to download and access the data.
“If you’re going to extract data
from a server, it’s recommended to make a script that doesn’t connect directly
to the server, but rather via [anonymous proxies],” the hacker’s post said,
according to PC World.
The hacker also mentioned the
Chilean President’s daughter: “Bachelet’s daughter has a school pass, although
it’s not given to many people because their parents have earnings above a
certain threshold.”
The Chilean newspaper El
Mercurio was the first to report the breach, and the story has been all over the
news for the past days.
However, despite the fact that
some people may be concerned about their private data being exposed, the head
of the Electoral Service, Juan Garcia, said the information is normally
available upon request, and that the database is “intact, secure and protected,”
the Associated Press reports.
The data released on the
Internet includes names, phones numbers, addresses and identity card numbers of
around 6 million Chilean residents. The investigation continues.
