According to specialists in website security services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have reported that the photos of the passengers registered by the agency have been the subject of considerable cyberattack, which has generated concern in several levels.
Through a statement, customs officials said
that these photos, which included images of people and car license plates, were
compromised as part of a cyber attack against a federal subcontractor company.
Experts in website security services emphasize
that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency systematically uses cameras
at airports and border crossings to record car registrations circulating around
these critical points. These records are used as part of the agency’s facial
recognition program, designed to track the identity of individuals entering or
leaving the U.S. territory.
Agency officials say that the operations of
this system at airports work smoothly; on a normal day, the agency gets to
process more than a million images of passengers and pedestrians crossing the
border.
In a statement, the agency claims that the data breach was notified on May 31, and reports that so far there is no evidence that the information has been compromised or is available in a forum of dark web. However, various media reported a few weeks ago a data gap in the company Perceptics, charged with recording the license plates of the cars in the traffic radars; on that occasion, the compromised data were available for free on some hacking forums.
Although the agency did not disclose on behalf
of the subcontracted company related to this incident, an agency document sent
to a media outlet repeatedly contained the name of the company Perceptics,
which could generate serious consequences for this organization.
According to experts in website security services
from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) this incident has
provoked the concern of the members of the U.S. Congress, as legislators of
both political parties have begun to consider the possibility of this becoming
a greater threat to the privacy of the people of the country.
