Government Hackers Try To Crack HealthCare.Gov

[Tkruger]

So-called "white hat" or ethical hackers from the inspector general's office found a weakness, but when they attempted to exploit it like a malicious hacker would, they were blocked by the system's defenses.

It's the second independent security assessment in as many weeks to find problems, and it comes on the heels of the massive breach at Home Depot stores, which affected 56 million credit and debit cards.


Government hackers try to crack HealthCare.gov

 

[RayNY]

In case this type of stuff confuses you:

Hired hackers try to break systems, it's how they test security, it's a common practice. They found what would normally be a vulnerability in the federal, but were unable to do anything with it. In my book, that means they found nothing.

NM's exchange had a bunch of vulnerabilities, but they didn't indicate whether you could accomplish anything with it.

Think of home security. The Fed is the equivalent of them going "oh, this window has no alarm sensor, that's a vulnerability. I still can't get it open or get inside, however." NM is more like "they never installed windows, we can just climb through the holes." With 64 problems, one is bound to be exploitable.

(FYI, the Home Depot issue wasn't even a hack and shares next to no similarities. Just like Target, (and using the same program!) theives installed software on the POS systems to log and transmit info that was entered. A "hack" would mean breaking into an existing database and stealing the info.)