Incident Response, TDR, Vulnerability Management

Australian teen exposes flaw in public transit site

The actions of an Australian teen, who exposed a website vulnerability affecting the Public Transport Victoria (PTV) website, are currently being investigated by police.

According to a Wednesday article in Melbourne daily The Age, 16-year-old Joshua Rogers alerted PTV on Dec. 26 of the flaw, but received no response until nearly a week later, after a media outlet inquired about the issue.

While the specific flaw that afflicted the site has yet to be divulged, the vulnerability has been deemed one that commonly affects websites. By exploiting the flaw, Rogers was able to gain access to a database of customers of the Metlink public transport online store. Information in the database included names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, partial credit card numbers and senior card ID numbers, The Age found.

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