Oklahoma Leaks 10,000 Social Security Numbers

DrJokepu writes "Apparently the folks at the Department of Corrections of Oklahoma just forgot to use common sense when they created the state's Sexual and Violent Offender Registry. By putting SQL queries in the URLs, they not only leaked the personal data of tens of thousands of people, but enabled literally anyone with basic SQL knowledge to put his neighbor/boss/enemies on the sexual offender list. Fortunately, after the author of the blog The Daily WTF notified the department about the issue, the site went down for 'routine maintenance' on April 13 2008."

Pleeeese!

[arizwebfoot]

Please tell me this is a spoof.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll have the best technology (your) money can buy when it is used AGAINST you (e.g. Dept of Homeland Security) but when they are doing something FOR you they cut corners and really couldn't care less.

Re:Get your lawyer ready....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is just one of the things that comes with being a sex offender.

Please be more careful with your terminology. The correct thing to say here is, "It is just one of the things that comes with being convicted as a sex offender." You can be a sex offender and not be on this list (if you're not caught) and you can be a non-offender and be on this list (if you're wrongfully convicted).

I know it may seem like a small thing but it's important to remember that not all criminals are caught, and not all convicted people are actually criminals.

Bad blurring

[Space cowboy]

Whereas the names and addresses of these people is a matter of public knowledge, is their email address and SSN also open ? If not, despite what you may think of their actions (public urination ? Really ?), it's not fair of the site to "blur" the relevant details so poorly.

I read the daily WTF, and usually I think it's pretty good, but Alex has made his own WTF here, IMHO.

Simon

Minor Correction

[geekoid]

"Yeah, sure.. Time to organize the community to hassle you until you leave. Enjoy being a RICH hermit you sick pervert."

Re:*facepalm*

[MightyMartian]

PHP has got to be one of the worst things that ever happened to web development. In the last year I've ended up with two jobs cleaning up someone else's code, and god but that language invites sloppiness on a level I've only experienced in the past with BASIC. The problem seems to be that it's easy enough to get a PHP-based page up, but the actual ability to coherently develop software isn't there. Anyone can learn to code in PHP, but only a few bother or are capable of actually invoking proper coding practices. The problem is that when these projects come up, rather than contracting out to someone who knows what they're doing, or at least hiring or training somebody who can code, they go to Bob the IT guy, who's okay at keeping the network up, and knows a bit of scripting, and who goes online and reads just enough of the PHP tutorial to be really dangerous.

In these cases, there's little or no commenting. Some things are done as classes, some as functions, there's no particular rhyme or reason, and it became so bloated that the original coders appear to have simply given up. It's terrible spaghetti code, but because it's on the web, no one seems to consider it software development. When you combine this with security, it can create a rather frightening mix of shitty almost undebugable code with an unknown number of potential security holes.

I know I sound elitist here, but goddamn it, PHP and all those lovely little scripting languages have unleashed a disaster on the web. It's bad enough that there's hackers out there, but much worse that there are incompetents being given the keys to the internal networks and data, without any knowledge of sound coding principles and of how to harden sites against injection attacks and the like.

lists should be minimal in size

[davidwr]

I know you are being sarcastic, but the bigger these lists are the more useless they become.

If every public urinator and teenager in love gets put on these lists, it's that much harder to spot the really bad guys. The same goes for the really bad people who are now harmless 89-year-old men dying in a nursing home. Get these people off the list ASAP.

If you aren't "level 3" or whatever "really really dangerous" is in your state, only the cops and those who have a proven need to know should have access to your information.

Re:*facepalm*

[lattyware]

Don't blame the language because the developers are incompetent.

Re:*facepalm*

[TheSpoom]

There are those of us out there that know how to code PHP in a sane, clear, and secure way. Unfortunately, I have to admit that there are a lot more that don't. I think one of the things you can do is to look for those that have languages like C++ and Java on their CV as well, and also for those that have a portfolio of code to review when they apply for a job. When you actually see the code, it's easy to separate the fly-by-night guys from the actual educated, experienced programmers out there.

By the way, on a somewhat unrelated note, we're using Django [djangoproject.com] for our new web game, and it's both interesting and easy to code, while still (rigorously) maintaining good coding practices. So I think there's also something to be said for those who work with frameworks like CakePHP, Rails, and Django, as those tend to both be object-oriented and to promote good coding practices.

As I've said before, I think PHP can and should be used well; there are just a lot of ways it can be used poorly.

Re:*facepalm*

[QuoteMstr]

The language makes it easily, or even tantalizing, to do it the wrong way, and very difficult to do it the right way.

The registry is stupid anyway.

[Dog-Cow]

The whole idea of having the registry is sheer stupidity, but on a scale designed to ruin innocent people.

Let's assume that a given person on the list was really a rapist (and not just convicted of it). If he's served his time and has repented, he won't do it again. So why do we punish him for the rest of his life with the registry? And if you think he will do it again, why is he not in jail?

You may as well just shoot him and be done with it.

Why Would Anyone Care?

[Bob9113]

but enabled literally anyone with basic SQL knowledge to put his neighbor/boss/enemies on the sexual offender list.

Why would anyone care if they were put on this list?

This issue has gone to the Supreme Court and they have ruled [wikipedia.org] that these lists are not punishment, and hence does not run afoul of restrictions against ex post facto punishment [wikipedia.org] or due process [wikipedia.org]. So if it is not punishment, why would anyone care if they are on the list?

Re:wow

[yuna49]

This is an official government list of alleged "sex offenders," not a list of people with parking tickets. Developers tasked with providing public access to such sensitive information, and the people who employ and direct them, should be adhering to the best practices, not the worst practices as in this case.

The real issues are that

(a) No one in the OK government probably cared much about the privacy of these "sex offenders" because, well, they're "sex offenders."

(b) Government agencies are constantly tasked by executives and legislatures to implement programs they're ill-equipped to handle and often receive no additional funding to carry out these mandates. Do you think the OK agency involved had tens of thousands of dollars to hire outside contractors with solid coding skills to undertake this task? Probably they handed it to someone in house who knew how to write SQL queries and a little PHP.

I'd fire the lot of them, including the department heads, and start over with people who have at least some clue about good IT practices. If this fiasco was actually the product of an outside consulting shop, I'd ban them from working for my state government for a very long time.

If we don't have substantial and public penalties for poor management like this, we're just going to be repeating our mistakes.

Re:Why Would Anyone Care?

[Damvan]

You are kidding, right?

In California, we have this thing called Jessica's Law. That law prohibits registered sex offenders from living a certain distance (usually 1000 ft) away from places children might congregate, such as schools, churches, playgrounds, parks, and in some cases, shopping centers.

So, if you are on the list, there are alot of places you CANNOT live. There are many cities in California where you can't live at all, simply because there is no place that is at least 1000 ft from the prohibited locations. If I was put on this list, I would be forced to sell my house and move as I live 1000 ft from a church. In fact, I would have to move out of the City I live in entirely as there is no residential areas outside of the prohibited locations.

Re:wow

[yuna49]

One other thing. I wonder if the OK legislature will launch an investigation into this fiasco, or will they avoid the problem since the people on the list were, after all, "sex offenders." I'd like to see the head of the Department of Corrections be grilled on why this happened. Unfortunately any legislator who might broach the subject would probably be labeled as sympathetic to sex criminals.

Re:*facepalm*

[AmaDaden]

True but we can blame the language for encouraging the developers to be incompetent. This will bring up the "They should learn how to do it right and not depend on the language" argument. I currently do Java web programing (JSPs not applets) and I experience both ends of this. Since Java does fantastic memory management and clean up people are constantly not having their code clean up after it self. On the other hand the strong existing structure for JSPs prevent a lot of possible security issues by giving us easy ways to do things securely so we don't have to whip up something that could have a very stupid flaw like this one.

All languages have their good and bad points. Not encouraging the coder do things the right way IS (I think) a bad point.

Re:*facepalm*

[ivan256]

I disagree with "very difficult to do it the right way"... If you know what you're doing it's only moderately more work.

Java, Perl, and Python all make it easier to do it the wrong way than the right way too. Simply because the wrong way is less work than the right way in almost every aspect of these types of problems.

(The above paragraph is also true for performance)

The parent to your post is spot on. Don't blame the tool because the user is an idiot. The incompetent programmer from this article doesn't have any business doing web development in any other language either, regardless of how much "easier" that language makes it.

Re:SSNs

[Workaphobia]

There is of course the other major point, that it is absolutely ridiculous how social security numbers are treated as sensitive information and required information in so many unrelated contexts. What idiot thought up the system of authenticating a person for credit using the same token that hundreds of other organizations use to identify that person?

Maybe in a hundred years we'll have registries of public keys and we'll all have private SS keys that are never shared with your credit card company, bank, and (if we were really lucky) government.

Re:*facepalm*

[OpenGLFan]

Yes, and:
Lumber and bricks make it very easy to build something that will fall on you and very hard to make a house.
Steel and wire make it very easy to build something that will snap and kill thousands and very hard to build the Golden Gate Bridge.
The solution is not to build the world out of Nerf. The solution is to keep Nature's fry cooks out of skilled labor jobs.

We need accreditation and liability

[QuoteMstr]

If I hire a carpenter to build my house and it collapses, the carpenter is liable. Engineers won't cooperate if management wants to cut corners on a bridge: they have a code of ethics and a body that enforces it.

Software, on the other hand, is a free-for-all today. We need an accreditation program and a code of ethics, just like more traditional disciplines of engineering. That's not to say that we'll restrict compilers to professionals; we don't reserve wrenches for professional mechanics.

But for a project that has the potential to cause so much harm to so many, a requirement to use trained and certified software engineers (with all the implications of the second word) would be invaluable.

The system is stupid.

[jd]

People can plead "insanity" on the grounds of having trouble telling right from wrong, but not on the grounds of actual mental illness. Rehabilitation is often said to be minimal to non-existant. Reports in the press frequently cover prison violence, gang warfare in the prison system and mental/physical/sexual abuse by both inmates and prison guards. Maximum security prisons are also described as being totally without sunlight (thus depriving the body of vitamin D) and essentially sensory deprivation chambers (driving inmates insane).

Whilst the system may not make a person a criminal (although there are Dickensonian arguments that say otherwise), it's very hard to see how a person can become truly repentent of their actions after such an experience. Repentent of being caught, perhaps, but where in there is a mechanism for establishing what went wrong in the first place, solving underlying issues or providing effective means for a person to not fall back into old patterns on release? The current judicial and prison systems appear geared towards revenge and retribution, not towards corrective action and prevention. In that case, it is entirely reasonable to assume that offenders will re-offend. It's possible you'd end up reaching the same conclusion on a (correctly managed) rehabilitation-oriented system, I won't argue that case, I will only argue that if the typical description of what prevails is accurate, the assumption of lifelong guilt is probably not all that inaccurate.

I have my own theories on what would work better (mostly involving dividing sentencing into two - one segment for punishment, if punishment is called for, and a distinct segment for treatment, if treatment would be useful), however such theories are never going to be tested or meaningfully examined, so in effect constitute un-disprovable hypotheses and therefore merely articles of faith no different from any other system of religious belief.

Re:Oblig.

[Torvaun]

I hope they don't, the sex offender list is a travesty.

Re:Oblig.

[sjames]

What's worse, of the 75% who are supposed to be there, many of them are not as advertised.

The sex offender lists are pushed as a list of child molesters and rapists. They are on there, but so are guys who got drunk and peed behind a dumpster (OK, not pleasant but hardly worthy of a scarlet letter), forgot to close the curtains, etc. One woman is there because she went topless at a protest. Then there are those who are on there for taking pictures of themselves while under 18 or for having sex with someone within a year of their own age.

They probably have a good case for cruel and unusual punishment but the courts dodge the issue by claiming the list isn't punative.

Of course, the idiots who stick anyone and everyone on the list that they can deserved or not are a real threat to society. If for no other reason, they are slowly rendering the lists meaningless.

Perhaps we need a "scarlet list" of prosecutors who willfully corrupt justice to get their numbers up. Those are people I *REALLY* don't want living in my neighborhood.