IT firm warned WINZ of kiosk issues last year

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Firm picked up kiosk issues last year

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A kiosk at Work and Income

A kiosk at Work and Income

By Tova O’Brien

The Ministry of Social Development was warned by an IT company last year that private client information could be accessed on its public computer kiosks.

But the system flaws are only being fixed now - a year-and-a-half later - after blogger Keith Ng accessed tens of thousands of confidential documents.

In April last year security experts from leading international IT company Dimension Data were contracted to hack Work and Income kiosks to find vulnerabilities in the system. Yesterday the Ministry of Social Development CEO said the company didn't find anything wrong, and today the story changed.

“Dimension Data raised issues with MSD, MSD paid them $10,000 to do that and then did nothing to follow up the problems they identified,”says  Labour social development spokeswoman Jacinda Ardern.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett says an investigation is needed.

“What we now need to work out is, was it acted it on, how it was acted on and obviously it wasn't well enough otherwise we wouldn't be in this situation today.”

Ms Bennett and her staff have been accused of intentionally leaking Urewera 17 member Ira Bailey's name to the media. He tipped Mr Ng off, having failed to get money from the Ministry of Social Development for pointing out the system flaws.

“He was asking for a reward - I believe that was the word that was used - so you can sort of take from that what you want to,” Ms Bennett says.

Ms Bennett says she's not interested in going on a witch hunt for this potential leak, and no one was under any obligation to keep Mr Bailey's name secret

But the Opposition will keep asking for an investigation into what it believes was a revenge leak.

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Comments

17/10/2012 8:09:46 a.m.

iron side wrote:

These "revenge leaks" are typical of the MSD. The leaks are invariably false allegations and threats calculated to besmirch credibility , intimidate persons and others who may come forward , into shutting up

16/10/2012 10:56:18 p.m.

H wrote:

Ira Bailey asked for a reward for finding a breach, National said no, then wanted the public to know. But IT company Dimension Data was rewarded $10,000 for finding a breach, the public were not told, National did nothing about it and did'nt want to know either. Oh National, where is your backbone, it is surely cheap and disgusting to use Ira as a scapegoat for your failings. This latest National Party spew (there will be more to come) may cost them the next election.

16/10/2012 10:25:50 p.m.

Al wrote:

The current systems favours glib narcissists who have a very loose association with the truth. Adverserial and hegelian. - I'd support a well thought out system similar to jury duty. The ballot box would once again be exactly that. - Those mesmerised by authority would be fearful of it of course, citing that randomly chosen people might not have the 'skillset' to do the job, but i consider the primary desirable skill to not be a broken human with a personality disorder with narcissism as it's main symptom. - A fair cross section of society represented in parliament would have far fewer of these morally deficient self aggrandising peacocks than we do now. Our system lets the scum float to the top.

16/10/2012 7:29:04 p.m.

Jimmy wrote:

Many years ago I watched an artist on TV saying the government should be run by a few "know it all professors from university and a bunch of Plunket nurses". I thought at the time what an eccentric fella who’s probably been sniffing too much oil paint. Now I know what he means and he’s probably onto something there. Sack Bennett, sack Key, sack English, sack Peters, sack Shearer....oh just get rid of that whole ‘absolute rabble of trash’ in parliament!