14 DAY TRIAL // An anonymous person revealed yesterday that he found a flaw in the official website of the Pan American Games held at Guadalajara in Mexico. The weakness seems to make accessible the personal information of all the journalists that cover the event.
According to Winnipeg Free Press, the tipster contacted a reporter and, to prove the findings, he quoted some bits of data such as date of birth and digits on a passport that truly seemed to belong to a journalist.
The organizing committee denied the fact that an easy access to the site is possible, but they refused to comment any further.
"I would hope (Pan Am organizers) would protect that information, but it looks like they haven't," revealed Ian Gordon, the Canadian director of marketing at Trend Micro, after taking a look at the email.
"The essence of this challenge is that these guys are pretty smart these days. All kinds of organizations have to be very vigilant about protecting that kind of information."
All of the 1400 journalists that cover the event could fall victims to identity theft as a result of a potential data breach as the information hosted on the website contains names, pictures, addresses and passport numbers.
The individual that noticed the vulnerability wanted to make sure the authorities won't go after him and wrote in the same email that he is not by any means a hacker and that he has no affiliation with the sporting event.
"I also want to clarify that in no way am I a hacker or did I hack this website. I discovered the security hole in the website only by coincidence,” he wrote. "I'm sure somebody else with bad intentions could gain easily access and abuse this security hole."
Hopefully no one else noticed the weakness and all the journalists that cover the Games will not be exposed.