I haven’t played an instrument since my mum’s optimistic attempt to get me to play the clarinet when I was around ten or twelve and far more interested in computers. I can read – all right, decipher – sheet music though.
According to Norkart’s press release, the breach was due to a misconfigured firewall. It was discovered at 13:12 last Thursday and fixed at 13:29, although I can’t find any information on how long it may have lasted. https://www.norkart.no/
The records contain current and previous owners’ names, addresses and ID numbers. The ID number (fødselsnummer) is extensively used for government services. It uniquely identifies each Norwegian resident and contains their date of birth and gender.
They say they don’t know whose data was accessed – potentially all current and previous owners of property in Norway, except for secret addresses.
The company that suffered the breach, Norkart, sells access to geodata such as the Norwegian property register that was the target of this attack.
(Disclosure: My employer is a customer of Norkart’s.)
(I’m writing about this here mainly because I feel that it might be interesting internationally, but I can’t find any English reporting on it.)
Up to 3.3 million Norwegian homeowners may have had their personal data breached. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/dnEWLz/dataangrep-mot-norkart
But I’m not thrilled to lose a small, popular, friendly and free indie thing that someone built for fun and put on the internet. Let’s have more of those.
I don’t mean this as a criticism of @powerlanguish@twitter.com or the @nytimes@twitter.com. As a programmer, I wouldn’t hesitate if someone offered me “a price ‘in the low seven figures’” for a hobby project and as a journalist, subscriptions and ads pay my salary. This acquisition makes sense.
The New York Times buys Wordle. Any guesses on how long until it becomes riddled with adtech, trackers and cookie banners?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/business/media/new-york-times-wordle.html
Newsroom nerd, now in Norway. I get excited about transport, travel, languages, and design. @bockph on Twitter.