Four States Warn Unemployment Benefits Applicants about Data Leaks
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:
Four states warn unemployment benefits applicants about data leaks:
The breaches stem from two incidents in which states hired contractors to quickly implement the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, or PUA, a version of unemployment insurance for Americans who don't qualify for conventional unemployment benefits but are otherwise unable to work because of the pandemic.
[...] The first incident stems from Arkansas, which launched its PUA website May 5. A week and a half later, it was forced to temporarily take the website down and alert 33,000 initial applicants that they had been exposed to a "data security incident," said Alisha Curtis, a spokesperson for the state Commerce Department.
[...] According to The Arkansas Times, the state took those steps only after a programmer trying to file for unemployment noticed a vulnerability that exposed the Social Security numbers and banking information of people who had applied for the program.
A contract acquired by KATV-TV of Little Rock showed that the state had paid a local company, Protech Solutions, $3 million to create its PUA website in a span of three weeks. Protech didn't respond to a request for comment.
[...] The second incident stems from one vendor. Colorado, Illinois and Ohio all hired the international consulting company Deloitte to build their PUA websites, each of which launched last week. The states have since alerted residents of a potential data leak.
According to a video that Illinois state Rep. Terri Bryant posted to Facebook, a constituent who tried to register for PUA benefits stumbled across "multiple peoples' names, full Social Security numbers, addresses," physical addresses and correspondence with the state Employment Security Department.
[...] The states said Deloitte told each of them about a bug that gave some claimants access to others' personal information and said it fixed the issue within an hour. The company told Ohio that about two dozen of its residents were given such access, and it told Colorado that about six were, according to representatives of the states' labor departments.
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