Summary: Data security and system security at Greater London Authority's Web site haven't been good; today we share just a couple of examples which help refute statements issued by Greater London Authority after a scandal that had made it to the mainstream media

MY! It really takes a liar to progress to management. The better the liar, the higher up the role.

As I mentioned the other day, there's somewhat of a blunder since Friday when the news broke:

The following conspicuous statement is worth assessing, as I was working on the sites (various aspects, some microsites too) for 9 years.

You would expect them to say that, wouldn't you?

As I said on Saturday morning, this has deja vu written all over it.

to give one example (there are more):

It wasn't Sirius stuff (and certainly wasn't me) who configured those terribly buggy forms.

As lying bosses at Sirius might say, "it doesn't look good..."

It's not the fault of Sirius either, at least not in this case.

The worst part of it is, as far as I'm aware GLA never publicly reported or disclosed this incident (sometimes this is legally required upon discovery or within a number of days, including informing those potentially affected, like people with their identity cards uploaded and widely available to the general public).

This isn't the only such example.

2 years later even malicious scripts/programs could be uploaded. It was only detected after it had happened. Here are some fragments of old messages:





This is a penalty for not scanning/sanitising uploads/input.

Why am I publishing these (redacted sensibly)? Because lying is wrong and privacy problems are the problem, speaking about them is not the problem. It is the moral thing to do -- to point out it is a repeat offender so to speak. There is an obligation here to debunk false assurances, as this has gone on for years already. ⬆