Hacker News Reader

Comment by trollied | Hacker News Reader

This was the start of it all: https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/31/capita_confirms_it_ou...

Some of the data was listed for sale: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/18/capita_breach_gets_wo...

For those not in the UK, Capita runs outsourced IT systems for lots of government agencies, councils, the NHS etc. Their nickname is "crapita" in some circles, due to how bad they can be.

It all started with an open AWS bucket...

View on HN

Crapita is right. When I was a teacher I was forced to use SIMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Information_Management_...

It's possibly the worst software I have ever had the misfortune to interact with. It started as a Microsoft Access database, written by a teacher, was taken on by a council, and then expanded to be the largest MIS in the UK.

It has always been slow, refuses to cache data on the client side which results in data loss if your wifi signal switches off, has the most clumsy UX I've ever seen, and despite being a modern piece of software it makes Curses look like an advanced UI from the next millennium.

Not that this changes your story at all, but FYI Capita sold SIMS in 2020

Yeah is it really a "hack" if they left an open AWS bucket. I'm sure some would argue so, but I think access that is entirely read-only and works entirely within the intended access controls of a system is pretty much fair game, at least morally.

Definitely not a hack, but it should be a crime.

I think it should be (is?) a crime to leak data like that, and I think it should be (is) a crime to use data that you "find" like that. However I feel strongly that exploring and finding the data, and then reporting it responsibly, should be a protected activity akin to whistleblowing that is not a crime.

you are paid to enforce rules, bet?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com