SC Governor Admits Hacking Errors

[HardOCP News]

South Carolina's governor says the state should have done more to prevent the hack last month that led to millions of private accounts being exposed. The Department of Revenue Director has also stepped down.

Gov. Nikki Haley says a report on a cyber-attack on South Carolina's tax collection agency shows officials could have done more to protect the personal information of nearly 4 million individual filers and 700,000 businesses. Haley also said Tuesday that Department of Revenue Director Jim Etter has resigned, effective Dec. 31.

 

[Rahh]

Ouch! This will be an ongoing war with anything on the internet I'm afraid. No one will be secure completely when they put persoanl information on the internet which is a very scarey thing since that's the way this world is going. We can't exactly turn back either until something very bad happens and will happen... One Day!

 

[Inside_line]

WE'RE SORRY

 

[WBurchnall]

I wonder if this somehow was an attempt to gain access to documents that might be extortion-worthy like Mitt Romney's tax return he was unwilling to release for the longest time except the last few years? IE, not willing to release tax returns for when he was working for Bain Capital.

I wonder if he'd pay a hacker who hacked that information say $500,000.00 to make sure it didn't get released prior to voting day to increase his chances of getting elected. Considering millions upon millions were spent on campaign ads, it might be worth it to 'buy' that tax return info from a hacker to avoid having the millions in campaign ads go to waste. Mind you, in retrospect, it did kind of 'go to waste' since he's not president.

 

[Globox]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H47ow4_Cmk0

 

[BBA]

Seems as if this is a sensationalist titled story aimed at deriding a Governor, who's state was a victim of a hack. All it really says is the Governor is now aware of faults in and is not satisfied with how secure the state's systems are.

This is a perfect example of politics by the media.

 

[SonDogg]

Seems as if this is a sensationalist titled story aimed at deriding a Governor, who's state was a victim of a hack. All it really says is the Governor is now aware of faults in and is not satisfied with how secure the state's systems are.

This is a perfect example of politics by the media.

As a resident of South Carolina I don't find the title sensationalist at all because it is precisely what happened. The government's initial response left a lot to be desired (setting aside the whole fact that this scenario should have been prevented anyway).

Nikki Haley on 10/30/2012: “(The breach) wasn't an issue where anyone in state government could have done something to avoid it."

Nikki Haley on 11/20/2012: “Could we have done a better job? Absolutely."

The facts of the scenario are pretty predictable (and horrible): Social Security numbers were kept in unencrypted files on computers without the latest security updates while connected to the internet. From what the investigation has shown the breach likely happened because a single employee followed a malicious link in an email and it comprised pretty much the entirety of S.C.'s Dept. of Revenue system(s). This is really basic shit and Haley's initial response was "it's not our fault" and "this is just the world we live in now". It's very obviously their fault and it's somewhat maddening that they're finally fessing up a month after the fact when any rational human being with basic tech knowledge had a very good idea what had happened.

So now S.C. taxpayers get one year of free credit monitoring through Experian only (which was agreed to in a no-bid contract that will cost taxpayers an additional $12 million). That's really not good enough and it's pretty infuriating to know that our state can't (or won't) take even the most basic steps to keep our personal information safe. And now because of their negligence and/or incompetence over 3 million people will forever have to monitor their credit like a hawk for the rest of our natural lives through no real fault of our own. And there's absolutely no recourse we can take because civil suits against public agencies are capped at something like $500k per incident in South Carolina.