<div dir="ltr"><a href="http://news.softpedia.com/news/argentinian-government-site-suffers-major-breach-personal-information-exposed-510780.shtml">http://news.softpedia.com/news/argentinian-government-site-suffers-major-breach-personal-information-exposed-510780.shtml</a><br><div class="gmail-body" id="gmail-newsbody">
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<p class="gmail-intro"><strong>The official website
of the Argentinian Ministry of Industry (Ministerio de Produccion)
suffered a major breach that exposed not only private </strong><strong>documents,</strong><strong> but also personal information and contact details of a big number of individuals.</strong></p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">The website, <a href="http://produccion.gob.ar">produccion.gob.ar</a>, was hacked by
Kapustkiy and Kasimierz L. who managed to breach it after getting access
to an administrator account.</p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">Softpedia was provided with evidence that access to
the admin panel was indeed obtained, which in its turn offered access to
personal information of employees and documents belonging to the
ministry which weren’t otherwise supposed to be exposed.</p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">We can confirm that details such as names, home
addresses, emails, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and phone numbers were
accessed as part of the breach and Kapustkiy told us that he estimates
that approximately 18,000 accounts were exposed.</p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">What’s important to note, however, is that Kapustkiy
doesn’t plan to leak the information, so although so many details were
accessed following the hack, individuals whose details were included in
these databases are fully secure.</p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">The ministry has already been contacted and informed
about the breach, but no response has been offered by the time this
article was published.</p>
<q class="gmail-subhead">Shockingly easy-to-guess password</q>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">As far as the method of breaching is concerned,
Kapustkiy said that they didn’t use a typical SQL injection, but a
different approach which he refused to disclose. We were, however,
provided with a look at the administrator account and we can confirm
that the used password is shockingly easy to guess – we can’t disclose
any details on this for obvious reasons.</p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">But given the fact that it’s the official website of
a ministry, it’s worrying to say the least that administrator accounts
are protected with so weak passwords, especially when taking into
account that they include databases with personal information of so many
people.</p>
<p class="gmail-mgbot_20">For the moment, the website is still up and running,
but expect IT admins to take down in the coming days when they
acknowledge the breach. Kapustkiy said he was able to download all files
they had on their servers after accessing the admin panel, so it’s very
clear that site admins need to deal with this as soon as possible.</p>
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