If you live in Joburg, you may want to pay attention. The City of Joburg (CoJ) has come under scrutiny because of a massive security flaw that shows your municipal invoices to anyone with an internet connection. These invoices include names, addresses, account numbers, PIN codes and financial details.

MyBroadband was made aware by a concerned citizen, who received no response after reporting the issue to the city.

I honestly tried to report it to the COJ, but their call centre could not assist. I then sent them an e-mail but I don’t anticipate that something will happen quickly there

You would think this would be a top priority considering how vulnerable this makes residents of the city.

The anonymous person who tipped off MyBroadband explained why people should be concerned about the publicly available information:

• Anyone can use these invoices for any purpose where a utility bill is required
• Information can be extracted  from the PDFs, and used for data-mining;
• Accounts can be accessed electronically with the account number and PIN of account holders

A concerned internet user said:

You can do lots of scamming with the info, targeted phishing attacks, produce fake ID books and proof of residence to match

The PDF statements are even indexed on Google and searchable by name.

We wonder how many people this will have to effect before the City comments, or makes changes to this insanely flawed system.

[Source : MyBroadband]