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Twin brothers wipe 96 gov't databases minutes after being fired
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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Why were they storing passwords in plaintext in the databases?!
First time reading about government systems, eh?
Why not? National Safety Department of Slovak Republic (Narodny Bezpecnostny Urad) had password NBUSK123… just government things
No, that was a bit different.
login: nbusr
password: nbusr123
my bad
The K in password doesnt match Republic in the name.
Totally secure.
Because like all critical infrastructure it was setup by somebody's kid on work experience
Or some poor guy who is setting it up, because it is a one off and just get it done project, that metastasizes into a fucking mess.
Or lowest bidder contractor.
All contracts go to the lowest bidder.
Fun fact, if the federal government contracts your company for a service, you arent legally allowed to sell it others for less.
Correct.
That's only usually true, but heavily depends on category. If someone is offering some service like software or managing employee benefits it can often be outweighed by other factors.
It's like leaving your car door unlocked in a bad neighborhood so your window doesn't get smashed for the $.36 in the center console. Attacker might take the prize and go without showing that everything around it is just as poorly-built.
Probably for the same reasons web browsers store them in plain text: They don‘t care.
Why one web browser stores them in plain text. Fucking Edge.
Who knows about the others, but I can pretty much guarantee you that Librewolf, for example, isn't doing that shit.
If you can autofill passwords without authenticating in some way, they are probably either stored in plaintext, or encrypted with a key that is stored in plaintext. Cause, like, how is it supposed to magically encrypt it.
That's how computers work, dummy. Magic.
I believe Firefox (and forks) only encrypt if you have set a master password.
Firefox and chromium browsers also store them in plain text. I know because I literally copied them from a file when setting up my password manager.
Well how else would they help the users if they ever forgot their passwords? Duh.
/s
Pretty sure thats part of the illegal thing done by these two, no?