UPDATED 28/2/2013 Tony the parliamentary tradie who owns @aph email address with the predictable passwords
Thursday, 28 February 2013
UPDATED 9.45 28/2/2013
There's Tony the tradie and Tony the minister in the Bourke/Burke clan at parliament house.
I phoned Tony Burke the minister's electorate office this morning and spoke with Sarah who said that she is aware of the other Tony Bourke at parliament house. Sarah passed me on to Angela in Tony's Canberra office. Angela was great too - she passed me on to the Parliament House switchboard - and they put me through to Tony's phone.
Tony is not a Minister of the Crown. Tony's a tradie who keeps Parliament House running. And g'day to Tony's colleague Graham who I had a lovely chat with this morning. Tony Bourke the tradie is sometimes bemused as he receives briefings intended for the Minister - and his passwords have been reset after his encounter with the ABC.
Were you like Tony the parliamentary tradie? Did you send your details in to this ABC website?
I have learned more tonight about hacking and data-base management than in all the previous reading I've done on the matter.
Risky.biz is reporting that the ABC's website was hacked in 2011 and the unauthorised incursion into ABC systems was not picked up.
This is going to be a very serious matter for the ABC and a source of ribbing for at least one Minister of the Crown.
Phil of Canberra is a regular on our blog and something of a genius.
Phil's note to us all is below - if you have a regular word as your password anywhere - go out and change it tonight. I hope that the Bourke household is busily doing that now.
Here's Phil
I took a copy of the hackers dump from the (redacted) pastebin and crossloaded into (redacted) this evening.
I wanted to have a look at the mix and quality of the passwords. I sort of do this whenever there is a decent sized dump (and the ABC hacking involves about 50,000). I consult / contract in IT security.
The full line from the Tony Bourke dump includes this stuff with a lot more redacted
bourkey
IP ADDRESS REDACTED -
Password parliament