A prison video visitation service exposed private calls between inmates and their attorneys

guest · Oct 13, 2020

A prison video visitation service exposed private calls between inmates and their attorneys
Thousands of calls were spilling from an unprotected server
October 10, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/10/prison-visitation-homewav-leak/

But now the security and privacy of these systems are under scrutiny after one St Louis-based prison video visitation provider had a security lapse that exposed thousands of phone calls between inmates and their families, but also calls with their attorneys that were supposed to be protected by attorney-client privilege.

HomeWAV, which serves a dozen prisons across the U.S., left a dashboard for one of its databases exposed to the internet without a password, allowing anyone to read, browse and search the call logs and transcriptions of calls between inmates and their friends and family members. The transcriptions also showed the phone number of the caller, which inmate, and the duration of the call.
Click to expand...

Security researcher Bob Diachenko found the dashboard, which had been public since at least April, he said. TechCrunch reported the issue to HomeWAV, which shut down the system hours later.
In an email, HomeWAV chief executive John Best confirmed the security lapse.

“One of our third-party vendors has confirmed that they accidentally took down the password, which allowed access to the server,” he told TechCrunch, without naming the third-party. Best said the company will inform inmates, families and attorneys of the incident.
Click to expand...

HomeWAV isn’t the only video visitation service to have faced security issues.

In 2015, an apparent breach at Securus resulted in the leak of some 70 million inmate phone calls by an anonymous hacker and shared with The Intercept.
In August, Diachenko reported a similar security lapse at TelMate, another prison visitation provide, which saw millions of inmate messages exposed because of a passwordless database.
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

A prison video visitation service exposed private calls between inmates and their attorneys

guest Guest

Log in or Sign up

A prison video visitation service exposed private calls between inmates and their attorneys

guest Guest

Useful Searches