The Healthcare.gov website remains highly vulnerable to cyber crime despite being fixed several times over the past few months. Security expert David Kennedy, founder of TrustedSec, said last week that criminals can easily access personal records of more than 70,000 Healthcare.gov members even without hacking into the system. All they have to do is an advanced Google search. It’s an alarming claim, which shows gaping holes in the implementation of Obamacare. Kennedy said the site is still crippled with several problems that put massive consumer data at risk.
None of the major Healthcare.gov problems have been fixed
David Kennedy revealed the shocking facts in his testimony before the House of Representatives Science Committee last Thursday. He had also testified on November 19, when he identified 18 major technical and security issues with the federal healthcare marketplace portal. Kennedy said last week that none of those 18 issues seem to have been fixed. In fact, it’s much worse now.
Personal data of more than 70,000 Healthcare.gov consumers, such as user names, names and addresses are easily accessible. Criminals simply have to use an advanced Google search and then tweak the resulting URLs. Kennedy himself didn’t tweak any URLs or viewed any user information, but he noticed that it was entirely possible. The cyber security expert said it is one of the easiest issues to fix as the Healthcare.gov team can hide all records in just a few days.
People lose confidence in Healthcare.gov
There are also many deeper issues, including a glitch that allows cyber criminals to impersonate every link coming from Healthcare.gov. David Kennedy and other experts said that new features added to the site are also bringing new problems. According to Security Headers, the Healthcare.gov website is more vulnerable than 50% of all sites on the web. In response to Kennedy’s report, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that it takes security issues very seriously, and has a “robust system” to address these issues. CMS is a Health Department agency that oversees the development of Healthcare.gov.
Healthcare.gov was developed with a goal to allow Americans to shop for health insurance just like they shop for gadgets on Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). But its disastrous launch and subsequent security issues have hampered public confidence in the website.
