A “good-guy hacker” who probed for weaknesses in the security systems of HealthCare.gov told Fox News on Wednesday that “no security was built into this entire infrastructure” and that citizens’ personal data is at serious risk.
TrustedSec CEO David Kennedy told Jon Scott on Happening Now that the Obamacare data hub, a central piece of the website that collects and shares private consumer information, is entirely open to criminals and foreign governments.
“We looked at the website when it first got launched on October 1,” he said, “and we noticed a lot of basic things that hadn’t been done. Just how it was constructed, the architecture around it, it looked like there was no security built into this entire infrastructure, website and everything that you see today.”
“It’s a prime target for hackers right now,” he continued. “If you look at the type of information you put in there — and the integration it has into other government agencies — you have the potential of all that information being exposed. One of the most alarming pieces about this is that the federal government does not have to disclose that there was a breach of data, so all your information can be taken and sold on the black market and you would have no idea.”
HealthCare.gov requires users to send their names, social security numbers, credit card data and tax information before they can purchase insurance on the federal exchange. Kennedy said the lack of security makes users vulnerable to identity theft, particularly where credit cards are concerned.
He also claimed that the lack of security will draw unwanted foreign attention that could harm national security:
KENNEDY: Most importantly, if you look at how this is, they claim that the data hub is the central piece to all this, behind everything. It connects to DHS, it connects to IRS, it connects to Experian, which is a third party. All of those are trusted connections, so as a hacker — especially foreign nations that are hostile to us — I’m going to go after that data hub and I’m going to start using that to infiltrate the IRS, DHS and a lot of other agencies that are out there, based on that being the front-door method into it.
SCOTT: So you’re saying it isn’t just individual hackers who might want to steal a person’s identity that are potentially going to exploit this system. You’re saying that foreign nations could be after it?
KENNEDY: That’s right. We’re actually being attacked all the times by different foreign nations . . . and they’re continuously looking at ways to hook themselves into different government departments so they can collect intelligence, so they can get information on U.S. citizens, how we operate and how we do things. It’s basically a treasure trove of information we have available, and they’re looking to steal it all the time.
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