The Texas Department of Public Safety was duped into shipping at least 3,000 Texas driver’s licenses to a Chinese organized crime group that targeted Asian Texans:
Steve McCraw, Department of Public Safety Director, speaks at a press conference with Gov. Greg Abbott and nine other governors regarding the southern border at Anzalduas Park in Mission on Oct. 6, 2021., The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
“We’re not happy at all, I can tell you that, one bit,” McCraw said in testimony to a House Appropriations subcommittee. “They should have had — controls should have been in place, and they never should have happened.” The state-run Texas.gov site is the central portal for Texans wanting to renew licenses, obtain driving records and registration, and obtain birth and death certificates, among other things.
DPS officials are not calling the incident a “data breach” because they say no hacking was involved and vast amounts of data were not being stolen. Instead, the crime group used data obtained from underground sources to bypass a simple password security system — laying bare a security vulnerability that “should never have happened,” McCraw said.DPS officials declined to provide details about the security loophole that left the site open to fraud but told lawmakers that it had been closed.
She stopped short of saying that was the weak spot used by the criminals and declined to specify whether the DPS had put the practice in place. DPS officials declined to comment further, citing the investigation. Before investigators shut down the operation, McCraw said, the license thieves were able to use the site, billed as “the official website of the State of Texas,” to obtain driver’s licenses that are “Real ID compliant” — not cheap copies, McCraw said.
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