Last week a journalist in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a vulnerability they discovered in the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's website that exposed the social security numbers of individual educators. The social security numbers were being exposed in the public facing HTML of the site, making them easily accessible to anyone with a web browser. The journalist disclosed the vulnerability to the state government before publishing the story so it could be fixed. However, the Missouri governor claimed that the journalist had hacked the government and announced that the journalist would be investigated by state police. In this episode we discuss the incident, explain why it was far from hacking, and talk about how it's another example of technologically illiterate leadership. We then broaden the case to include leaders at all levels of government and propose a solution.

Show Notes

• Missouri teachers’ Social Security numbers at risk on state agency’s website via St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• Episode 6: How does the Web work?
• Episode 44: Google v. Oracle
• Episode 59: What is HTML and CSS?
• Episode 17: What is Encryption?

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