Canadian Passport Website Falls For Oldest Privacy Breach On The Web

from the that-one-again? dept

Back in the early days of the web, there were plenty of stories about a rather simple security breach on various sites. Basically, many sites would simply pass a user's account number through as a part of the URL. If a user simply changed the URL, her or she could see the account info of that other issue associated with the new number. After a few such cases came to light, most web app designers quickly realized to plug that hole, and it's been quite some time since we've heard of a site with such a security hole. However, it appears that there are still a few. The site for Passport Canada, where people can apply for a Canadian passport apparently had exactly that security vulnerability, allowing the guy who discovered it to see the passport application data of other applicants simply by adjusting the URL. It's never nice to hear about a security flaw (especially on a gov't website with all sorts of private info), but it actually induces a bit of nostalgia to hear of such a basic security flaw showing up in the wild yet again.

Filed Under: breach, canada, passports, security, url, websites