With growing use of biometrics at the border, are we leaving our personal data exposed to hacking?
A U.S. border patrol database of traveler photos and license plates has been compromised as part of a malicious cyberattack, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.
The Washington Post first reported the incident involving a federal subcontractor, which transferred the images from CBP databases to their company network without the federal agency’s knowledge or authorization. Hackers then breached the subcontractor’s network. CBP systems were not hacked.
The images contained approximately 100,000 people in vehicles entering and exiting the U.S. over six weeks through a single port of entry, one U.S. government official told The Post. No other identifying information was included with the photos, and no passport or other travel document photos were compromised, the official said.
CBP operates and maintains a database of visa and passport photos as part of a facial recognition system to streamline traveler verification at their ports of entry and exit. The federal law enforcement agency also makes extensive use of cameras and video recordings at the arrival halls of international airports as well as land border crossings, where images of vehicles are captured.
The agency declined to name the breached subcontractor to The Post, but CBP officials sent the news organization a Microsoft Word document titled “CBP Perceptics Public Statement.”
A breach at Perceptics, a Tennessee-based company that builds and sells license plate readers, was reported by photos travelers license plates stolen border protection breach avast
