Jennifer O'Nan, who works in the Governor's Office for Technology for Kentucky State Government, said officials in her office were concerned that the Department of Corrections, which published the site, didn't put enough effort into computer security when it launched the site last month. Her office is currently reviewing the site's security. The London group also found vulnerabilities in South Carolina's online criminal records database, which sits on the same server as that state's sex offender registry. They were defaced by intruders in November 1999. Still, the hackers complained, those attacks did not act as a needed wake-up call regarding the need for more diligent security measures.
Most database administrators have a host of other duties, and are overworked.
Several states outsource a part of their computer administration, and in some cases responsibility for maintaining database security slipped through the cracks. We're trying to determine that. Why on the Web Publication of sex offender data on the Internet is both increasingly popular and increasingly controversial. The data is made public so concerned citizens and institutions can regularly check to see if a known sex offender lives nearby. In 1997, state agencies started turning to the Internet in an effort to make the information more widely available.