The Jamaica Gleaner published an article on February 19, 2021, about a prosecution threat for the JAMCOVID breach. Here’s a summary:
- The Jamaican Government has hinted at the punishment of anyone found guilty of breaching the JAMCOVID web portal from their findings in an independent review. This warning is due to thousands of Jamaican and international travellers’ data being exposed from the application developed by the Amber Group.
- This application allowed users to enter personal data including medical records before entry is permitted into Jamaica and also tracked the movement of individuals under quarantine. TechCrunch, an American online newspaper revealed that a cloud storage server with the uploaded documents had been left unprotected leaving thousands of files exposed on the internet.
- The Ministry of National Security has stated the identified vulnerability has been rectified and reassured the public by saying that they must ensure unauthorized access to data is investigated and prosecuted. Since then the Communication Forensics and Cybercrime Unit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency has been brought to aid investigation.
- The security vulnerability was reported by the government as discovered on February 16 but a security editor at TechCrunch said he sent the details of the exposed server to the Ministry of Health and Wellness on February 14.
Source: jamaica-gleaner.com
Contributed by Racquel Bailey from Jamaica. Racquel is a member of our Women in InfoSec Caribbean (WISC) initiative on Discord. WISC is a non-profit initiative supporting Caribbean women and girls to develop a career in Information Security.
Learn more about WISC at wiscaribbean.org.