Monday, May 06, 2013
Star-Advertiser story links to purloined HPD data
by Larry Geller
It’s bad enough that hackers were able to break into an HPD computer system and take away names, emails and passwords of both HPD officials and users of their alert system. See the Star-Advertiser breaking news story: HPD alert system hacked, user emails and passwords compromised (Star-Advertiser, 5/6/2013).
For some reason, the paper decided to also post links to where readers can go to see the data themselves.
They didn’t have to do that for the news story. I believe most publications would omit that kind of information. They could have reported the story without doing the hackers any favors.
In just three clicks from the S-A story I had a list of emails and passwords on my screen, including the HPD chiefs office, community affairs, special duty officers, narco, etc. Now, I’m sure that HPD has already changed the passwords, but it’s always possible to send to the email addresses anyway. In other words, the S-A has likely made a bit of mischief possible that could have been avoided simply by not linking to the hacker sites.
I’m going to let them know that perhaps they should update their article by taking out those links.
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