A data breach has reportedly occurred at the Missouri Education Department, exposing 100,000 social security numbers of teachers, admins and counselors. And security experts fear such data leak can lead to phishing attacks and identity thefts in near future.
In what is known to our Cybersecurity Insiders, the hack took place because of vulnerability in the search feature on the website maintained by Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that could cause $50m loss.
As soon as a tech reporter discovered and reported the vulnerability to the department, the IT staff immediately pulled down the page to fix the tool.
Mallory McGowin, the spokesperson of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, endorsed the news and added that the IT staff was working to fix the search tool that could have possibly led to the data exposure.
Ms. McGowin dismissed speculations, doing rounds on a certain section of media that the leak could have exposed data related to nearly 100,000 people and termed it as an exaggerated story.
Missouri Commissioner’s Office announced the incident was brought to their notice early last week and an investigation on this note is in process.
Note 1- A reporter at the St Louis Post Dispatch discovered the incident and the data exposure and notified it to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on October 11th, 2021.
Note 2- Surprisingly, Mike Parson, the governor of Missouri, spoke at a press conference and said that the journalist who discovered the flaw and reported should face criminal hacking charges…….wonder what his mindset?
