Let's take a look at this idiot. Not only does he attempt to have his state overrun with Covid by pushing denier nonsense while threatening health officials --- now he wants to arrest journalists for committed no crime. He doesn't like having his state government exposed for all of their failures under his "leadership". In other news -- the governor does not know the actual definition of a "hacker" -- finding information left exposed on a public website is not hacking. Missouri governor is calling for criminal charges against a journalist who found social security numbers exposed on a public website https://www.businessinsider.com/gov...rnalist-who-found-ssns-exposed-online-2021-10 The governor of Missouri is calling for criminal charges against a reporter who found social security numbers exposed online. The reporter found that the SSNs of over 100,000 teachers were viewable on a government site. Gov. Mike Parson labeled the reporter a "hacker" and demanded an investigation — which cyber experts say makes no sense. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson is demanding a criminal investigation into a journalist who found social security numbers exposed on a state website — a reaction that cybersecurity experts say makes no sense. On Wednesday, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud published a story revealing that the state's education department website exposed the SSNs of over 100,000 employees including teachers and administrators. All Renaud had to do to view the SSNs was open "inspect element" to view the page's source code, which anyone can do with two clicks of a mouse. Renaud first disclosed the exposure to the state on Tuesday and waited until the issue was fixed before publishing his story — a well-established best practice in cybersecurity reporting. But after the story went live, Parson held a press conference Thursday slamming Renaud as a "hacker" and calling on state prosecutors to conduct a criminal investigation into his report. "We will not let this crime against Missouri teachers go unpunished," Parson said. "They were acting against a state agency to compromise teachers' personal information in an attempt to embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet." Parson's remarks have been met by widespread bewilderment and outrage from cybersecurity experts, who say Renaud disclosed the exposed data responsibly and that using a web browser's "inspect element" tool does not constitute hacking. "Hitting F12 in a browser is not hacking," SocialProof Security CEO Rachel Tobac said in a tweet. "Fix your website." Another cybersecurity researcher, Matt Blaze, admonished Parson for moving to "call the cops" on someone who "quite responsibly" disclosed the vulnerability. A day after Parson's press conference, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly tweeted that the agency relies on researchers who "find and responsibly disclose vulnerabilities" — a message interpreted by some to reference Parson's remarks. A CISA spokesperson declined to comment beyond Parson's tweet when reached by Insider. Despite Parson's bluster, it's unlikely that any criminal charges will be filed against Renaud. As TechCrunch reports, a recent Supreme Court ruling found that in order to violate federal anti-hacking laws, a person has to obtain information from a computer that they can't normally access — meaning information available on a public website is unlikely to be considered off-limits. St. Louis Post-Dispatch publisher Ian Caso said in a statement that the newspaper stands by Renaud, who "did everything right." "It's regrettable the governor has chosen to deflect blame onto the journalists who uncovered the website's problem," Caso said.
The governor is so ignorant that he does not know the legal definition of hacking... and is attempting to prosecute a reporter for something that is not a crime. Not only this.... but the reporter took all the proper steps in reporting the vulnerability in the state's public website to the state IT security team.
The state of Missouri used the same exact methods as those of the reporter to find flaws in their public websites. The state found numerous flaws revealing private information over the years and has a very poor record in fixing them. Parson livid at IT security report, but Missouri also used public data to spot cyber problems https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article255010692.html After a reporter this week uncovered a security issue on a Missouri state website that left Social Security numbers of teachers open to disclosure, Gov. Mike Parson threatened criminal charges. But Missouri has deployed its own program to root out cyber vulnerabilities. Called “Using Public Data to Alert Organizations of Vulnerabilities,” the program in the Office of Administration (OA) relied on a research platform that scanned the entire internet. In turn, OA’s Office of Cybersecurity used the information to identify weaknesses and then notified the agencies or businesses affected. Missouri’s own embrace of scouring public information in search of security gaps stands in marked contrast to how Parson reacted Thursday to the discovery made by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which used HTML source code on a website maintained by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, or DESE. In an angry appearance outside his Capitol office, the Republican governor announced he had referred the reporter and the newspaper for criminal investigation and accused them of accessing the Social Security numbers out of a “political vendetta.” “This individual did not have permission to do what they did,” Parson said. “They had no authorization to convert or decode. So this was clearly a hack.” The source code is accessible with a couple of key strokes to anyone with a web browser. The newspaper, which says it stands by its reporting, found that Social Security numbers of upwards of 100,000 were potentially at risk of exposure. Cybersecurity experts called the newspaper’s discovery of Social Security numbers in the DESE web pages’ source code a concerning and common programming flaw. “I really chalk this up to sloppy coding,” said Joe Scherrer, a cybersecurity expert at the Washington University of St. Louis. “If someone is enterprising to do that right-click and check the code and find this information, that’s readily available … If I was a teacher I’d be upset because the state government didn’t properly protect my information.” On Thursday afternoon, Parson tweeted that “this DESE hack was more than a simple ‘right click.’” He said the data had to be taken through eight steps to generate a Social Security number, but didn’t detail the steps. (More about this idiot including his totally misinformed recent Tweets at above url. This level of ignorance by a public official is pretty much unacceptable.)
what a jackass. The reporter gives the admin the courtesy of not publishing the story until issue is fixed (upon his discovery & tip-off) and this is how he's repaid. Next time just go scorched earth and let these assholes deal w/the fallout.
Missouri Gov Mike Parson Vows Reporter Who Found Sh*tty Coding In State Website Will PAY https://www.wonkette.com/missouri-g...found-sh-tty-coding-in-state-website-will-pay No one has ever accused Missouri Gov. Mike Parson of being an especially smart man, but he is at least capable of a low vegetable cunning. Back in October, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discovered an incredibly stupid security vulnerability on a state website. The site, which was designed so people could easily look up credentials and certifications for more than 100,000 public school teachers, counselors, and administrators, included a dumb error in its publicly viewable coding that inadvertently left the Social Security numbers of all those employees pretty much right out in the open for any bad person to steal. The Post-Dispatch reporter wrote up the story, alerted the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to the problem, and held off on publication to give the agency time to fix the security flaw. Then it went to press. The paper noted right up top, in the fourth brief paragraph, that it had delayed the story specifically so the state could protect the educators' data, and so it could check other agencies' webpages for similar problems. No good reporting goes unpunished, so Parson reacted to the story by demanding the reporter and the Post-Dispatch be investigated and prosecuted for "hacking" the state website. Thing is, there wasn't any "hacking" involved, as Krebs on Security explained at the time, since the SSNs were almost right out in the open to be seen by anyone with specialized software, like a common web browser. The newspaper said it found that teachers’ Social Security numbers were contained in the HTML source code of the pages involved. In other words, the information was available to anyone with a web browser who happened to also examine the site’s public code using Developer Tools or simply right-clicking on the page and viewing the source code. Go ahead and right-click on this page (On a Mac, Press "Command + Option + U"), and you can see Wonkette's page code, which doesn't include any SSNs but may contain this week's Powerball numbers. Or not. It looks a tad bit like this, only this screenshot is from my earlier Facebook Went Full Nixon story. Oh no! If you right-clicked in Missouri, you're now a criminal hacker, according to Mike Parson! We won't tell. In a Facebook statement announcing the vendetta against the reporter and the newspaper, Parson insisted that such "unlawful" access of teacher data had to be punished, claiming that the reporter — or rather, "an individual" — had done hacking of private data! Through a multi-step process, an individual took the records of at least three educators, decoded the HTML source code, and viewed the social security number of those specific educators. The steps were "right click," "view source," and scrolling. That's because the code was shitty. We guess the reporter did have to read the text on the screen to notice numbers that were clearly SSNs, so that's how he "decoded" the HTML code. Parson then explained the full weight of Missouri law enforcement would be deployed against the sophisticated right-clicking hacking operation: This administration is standing up against any and all perpetrators who attempt to steal personal information and harm Missourians. It is unlawful to access encoded data and systems in order to examine other peoples’ personal information. We are coordinating state resources to respond and utilize all legal methods available. My administration has notified the Cole County prosecutor of this matter, the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Digital Forensics Unit will also be conducting an investigation of all of those involved. This incident alone may cost Missouri taxpayers as much as $50 million. This matter is serious. [...] A hacker is someone who gains unauthorized access to information or content. This individual did not have permission to do what they did. They had no authorization to convert and decode the code. This was clearly a hack. Indeed, there's clearly a hack here, but it doesn't involve anything the reporter did. Worse, it's like prosecuting a whistleblower, because if people worry reporting a security problem will get them jailed, they may stay quiet and leave the vulnerability in place. And now we have an update on the story, which sadly does not involve Mike Parsons saying an aide had showed him a computer mouse and explained that some of us are such shitty typists that we illegally view HTML source code several times a day by accidentally hitting the "F12" key when we mean to backspace. Instead, the Post-Dispatch informs us that yesterday, Parsons said he's pretty sure the Cole County prosecutor will be charging the reporter for his crimes. Parson referenced a state statute on computer tampering, which says a person commits the offense if they “knowingly and without authorization or without reasonable grounds to believe that he has such authorization” modifies or destroys data, discloses or takes data, or accesses a computer network and intentionally examines personal information. Then Parson deployed a really bad metaphor, for which he should feel bad: “If somebody picks your lock on your house — for whatever reason, it’s not a good lock, it’s a cheap lock or whatever problem you might have — they do not have the right to go into your house and take anything that belongs to you,” Parson said. Except, no, this is more like you taking photos of yourself doing nekkid yoga in your living room and posting only the itty-tiny thumbnails of the photos on Zillow. Someone might enlarge them and see your voonerables by selecting "view image in new tab" then tell you, OMG BECKY I SAW YOUR JUNK, but that ain't hacking. The Post-Dispatch reported earlier this month that in fact, emails obtained through a public records request showed the state education department was on the verge of thanking the reporter for alerting it to the vulnerability before Parson demanded vengeance. What's more, an FBI investigator who looked at the reporter's emails informing the department of the problem said that the incident was "not an actual network intrusion," and that the FBI dude said the state’s database was “misconfigured,” which “allowed open source tools to be used to query data that should not be public.” On Monday, a spokesperson for the Missouri State Highway Patrol confirmed that the investigation was all done, and that the agency had turned over its findings to Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson, who of course had no comment, not even about whether he's a good Locke, a cheap Locke, a fancy CyberLocke, or even a nude yoga doer. In conclusion, this is extremely stupid, and we just hit F12 and viewed our own code while trying to fix a typo. Just try to come and get us, copper! [St Louis Post-Dispatch / Krebs on Security / Post-Dispatch]