<Prev | [Index] | Next>


lauren@vortex.com
Date: November 4, 2017 at 10:58:16 PM EDT

via NNSquad https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/04/estonia-freezes-resident-id-cards-security-flaw/

Estonia's residents use their mandatory national IDs to access pretty
much anything, from online banking to online voting. So, it was a huge
blow to the program when experts found a security flaw in the IDs' chip
that makes it easy for bad players to impersonate and steal the
identities of all 760,000 affected individuals. That might not sound like
a huge number, but that's half the small country's population. Now, the
country has blocked most of its residents from accessing all its online
services for a weekend, so it can go in and and fix the vulnerability.
All ID cards issued from the beginning of the program in October 2014 to
October 25th, 2017 will be frozen until their owners apply for updated
certificates with the fix. They can do that online, but the online
service kept crashing over the past week, leading people to flock to
police stations and other government offices to get their IDs
updated. For now, only medical professionals and the most frequent users
will be able to apply for updated certificates online, but Estonia will
open up the system to the public again on Monday.


<Prev | [Index] | Next>