YHK - yet another hacker news clone

`123456' password used in Danish CPR data breach

117 points baal80spam 1 hour ago 77 comments

imdsm 1 hour ago | parent

not ideal

tannertech 56 minutes ago | parent

yeah it's rather unfortunate isn't it

donalhunt 1 hour ago | parent

In Denmark, a CPR number (short for Det Centrale Personregister, or Central Person Register) is a unique 10-digit personal identification and social security number assigned to every resident and citizen.

Equivalent to social security information in the US I guess.

lordnacho 1 hour ago | parent

It's unique, but it encodes your birthday and sex.

There's only 500 numbers it could be, assuming someone knows those other things about you.

In any case, there are alternative systems for authorisation.

usrnm 1 hour ago | parent

You're contradicting yourself, how can it be unique if only 1000 can be assigned per given date of birth? What if more than one thousand babies are born in the country one day?

piva00 1 hour ago | parent

It's Denmark, it won't have 1k babies born the same day.

It's the same in Sweden: YYYY-MM-DD-XXXX is the format for a personnummer, double the population of Denmark and there are no collisions.

ls65536 48 minutes ago | parent

That format looks like it would allow for up to 10k per day. Unless one of those X's is a check digit?

onionisafruit 29 minutes ago | parent

They said sex is encoded in it, so it’s probably a sex digit.

edit: I was wrong. Wikipedia says, “The first digit of the sequence number encodes the century of birth (so that centenarians are distinguished from infants)”.

It also says “the last digit of the sequence number is odd for males and even for females”. What a strange system. Essentially the last three digits are two different sequences made to look like one.

polack 33 minutes ago | parent

There have been collisions in Sweden, but that was due to lots of immigrants coming from the middle east that did not know when they where born. So many of them picked first of January. They “solved” it by overflowing to the next days.

madmoose 30 minutes ago | parent

Immigrants who don't know their birthdate are assigned xxxx-01-01, so they have actually run out of numbers for January 1st in some years.

tannertech 1 hour ago | parent

That's a problem for future Denmark!

gus_massa 48 minutes ago | parent

For some unknown reason, the SSN in USA is assumed to be secret. You go to the bank, say SSN=12345 and they give you a million dollars and then send the collector the the guy/gal with that number, and call it identity thief instead of bad bank security or fraud.

Here in Argentina, the DNI is assumed to be public, it appears in a lot of public documents next to your name, and on election day there is a list of all the local voters with name and DNI at the door of the pooling site. To pay a sweater in two installments you may need to present the phisical DNI card and a water or electricity bill and they photocopy all of them.

INTPenis 1 hour ago | parent

I love getting to the root cause of these incidents. Hate it when they just move on with no post mortem, the rest of us are trying to learn here!

Like the recent ransomware attack on a Swedish Svedala municipality, still no root cause published on that?

piker 1 hour ago | parent

That’s the same combination I have on my luggage!

Sau1707 1 hour ago | parent

I bet you are not the only one!

justinclift 1 hour ago | parent

The Spaceballs piece about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iW-8xPw3k

HPsquared 1 hour ago | parent

Funnily enough, luggage calls back to those TSA locks.

bryanrasmussen 28 minutes ago | parent

the same price of a large pizza where I used to work as a delivery guy! Those pizzas were way expensive.

wrecked_em 8 minutes ago | parent

Props to you, good sir. You beat me by one hour.

m00dy 1 hour ago | parent

lol, it's a joke right ?

lordnacho 1 hour ago | parent

Completely real.

lifestyleguru 1 hour ago | parent

For 1-2 years now strictly IT companies are on Copilot, non strictly IT companies on autopilot, and in neither case there are any pilots. Hopefully the default installation and configuration of everything will solve all your problems because there is nothing else.

zweifuss 1 hour ago | parent

I’m less shocked than I should be. National ID registries can be incredibly convenient, but when something goes wrong, it can go terribly wrong. Despite my general misgivings, I hope the IT company is visibly held accountable.

sethammons 1 hour ago | parent

What would that accountability look like?

gunalx 1 hour ago | parent

Not existing preferably.

tannertech 1 hour ago | parent

Strange way to say prison time. Or if you meant capital punishment harsh but fair.

tossandthrow 1 hour ago | parent

This is the likely outcome. It was a company employing 2 people.

lifestyleguru 1 hour ago | parent

Intensify the "beware of scammers and identity thief" campaign. Go all in - unblockable SMS's, emails, and notifications. Treat any feedback and objection as an attack.

sneak 1 hour ago | parent

The question really becomes: why do so many organizations seem to know absolutely nothing about well-publicized and well-documented best practices? How does a government completely lack controls or oversight for basic competence?

LarsKrimi 1 hour ago | parent

Privatization

It was run by DXC Technology, the Danish branch of a US software house.

When doing a contract on such programs the Danish government must take the cheapest offer by rule

GuestFAUniverse 1 hour ago | parent

What could go wrong? /S

tokai 1 hour ago | parent

Its interesting, while private companies just blast our data out there, I cannot install the software I need to do my work because the state IT provider blocks it on security grounds. Its all very tiresome.

GuestFAUniverse 1 hour ago | parent

Been there. Waited more than three years for a host to be properly accessible within a hospitals network. Project related.

Since then I think medical data science is mainly a waste of tax payer's money.

sokols 1 hour ago | parent

I think that the third parties who have been granted access to the civil registry should be audited on a regular basis for the “best practices” of the day. Similar to the participants of the payment systems like VISA or MC that are regularly audited for PCI standards.

iLoveOncall 1 hour ago | parent

Or simply make people who choose insecure passwords criminally responsible for the fallout.

bryanrasmussen 29 minutes ago | parent

and make the people who didn't put any sort of limits on how many records can be downloaded before there has to be a check on what is going on or any of the other stupid security holes that were found, make them criminally responsible as well. At some point you can be sure you'll be imprisoning someone for making a typing mistake (accidentally commented out some code) or a logic mistake (I should have said IS NOT, but instead I said IS) or just being tired.

zweifuss 1 hour ago | parent

A least privilege access redesign seems reasonable too. And abuse monitoring; the leak went on for 21 days undetected.

croes 1 hour ago | parent

Did they have MFA?

zkmon 1 hour ago | parent

I wouldn't the blame the guy. The security teams tend to serve entirely security related goals only, and they don't hesitate to stop all activity, if they are allowed to, to ensure the highest level of security. On the other side, there are people who have goals for productivity and getting work done. They don't hesitate to take the shortest route possible to maximize their productivity. If productivity is not your goal, then security is not my goal.

It's tussle between two counter-acting forces at play. This get's worse when the overarching authority that supervises both departments, has no clue about how to hit a balanced prioritization. For example, security teams rule the financial companies, like mafia bosses. No one, including CEO, can dare to question why so many layer of security is needed.

ano-ther 59 minutes ago | parent

With two people in the company, there is not a lot of room for corporate games though.

> According to Denmark’s Central Business Register, Pays ApS had two employees as of July 2026.

tialaramex 56 minutes ago | parent

> It's tussle between two counter-acting forces at play.

It really doesn't have to be, and setting things up as adversarial is counter-productive. Pretending that you're "balancing" two competing alternatives when they may not even be opposed is a problem, it gets you C++ std::span, a type which was standardized to be pointlessly dangerous because hey, surely if it's less safe that will make it faster right? [Morgan Freeman's Voice: But it was not faster]

tossandthrow 52 minutes ago | parent

I would love to hear about a world where security and productivity are not counter acting forces.

For a start, most people would certainly be more productive if they hadn't had to authenticate themselves.

If you can just create a world for that simple case, then I will rest my case.

ulfbert_inc 55 minutes ago | parent

You are presenting a false dilemma (probably unintentionally). While security can be at odds with usability, basic measures like password generation and management are a solved problem. In fact using password manager is more convenient than typing password manually, even 123456 :)

xandrius 37 minutes ago | parent

Ha, I don't need to type 123456, it's stored in my navigator's password manager for convenience. Checkmate.

altmanaltman 53 minutes ago | parent

Setting '123456' as a password on any non-trivial system is not "the shortest route possible to maximize their productivity." It would be setting the password as "000000"

ntoskrnl_exe 34 minutes ago | parent

I'm not sure, I think it's a little more ergonomical to hit six different keys compared to hitting a single key precisely six times.

nylonstrung 23 minutes ago | parent

The guys who are really into keyboard layouts would argue vehemently that 123456 is more ergonomic as it's an "inward roll" vs 6 consecutive presses of a key that aligns to the pinky

kay_o 52 minutes ago | parent

Touch one hardware key for every interaction then, not 123456, the hell?

tokai 42 minutes ago | parent

Just because a task is hard it should never absolve anything. Guy could just have quit if he didn't want the responsibility.

mattlondon 1 hour ago | parent

If only they had insisted on an 8 character password!

fifilura 1 hour ago | parent

1Password#

Oops, can I delete my comment, it was a copy paste mistake!

lifestyleguru 58 minutes ago | parent

> **********

> Oops, can I delete my comment, it was a copy paste mistake!

What do you mean? You can safely post your passwords on the internet.

_kb 52 minutes ago | parent

hunter2

LarsKrimi 57 minutes ago | parent

There are some unconfirmed rumors going that the maximum password length for the API was 8 characters...

walrus01 23 minutes ago | parent

hunter2#

ano-ther 1 hour ago | parent

So it was actually two weaknesses:

* The non-password at a two-person IT company (Pays ApS)

* And then completely unchecked access to the CPR database for 22 days which apparently does not have monitoring or limits if someone tries to access all the records (they must have made some 16k downloads per hour).

tuwtuwtuwtuw 49 minutes ago | parent

There's also the weakness that the security relies ok this information being secret. Denmark make use the personal numbers for a form of authentication, but the numbers are readable to many people. In sweden, this data is public by design. Authentication happens using public/private key and other secure mechanisms.

olau 40 minutes ago | parent

Just to expand slightly on this: Some old procedures, probably from the main frame age, live to this day in old institution, including the belief that you can ask people about their personal number over the telephone and auth them that way.

I don't think any IT infrastructure is doing it, it's all by a national single-sign on system.

tuwtuwtuwtuw 28 minutes ago | parent

I will expand a bit further - all the data that was compromised in this breach is public by design in sweden, as far as I know. Not just the personal numbers.

nylonstrung 21 minutes ago | parent

Personal numbers and social security numbers in US are horrible idea, essentially a password and username simultaneously

caaqil 55 minutes ago | parent

It's easy to blame the individual users but any system (designed by incompetent people) that accepts such a password as valid deserves whatever compromise it gets.

ionwake 51 minutes ago | parent

Im sorry I know Im getting old but I say everyone is responsible. From the press who might focus too much on the whistleblower, to the poeple who OKed the company for 3rd party access, to the team responsible for regulation to the person who didnt order further checks.

I dont understand why there is not massive reorganisations in systems when things go wrong. Its always , oh yeah so we fired the guy furthest down the ladder.

You might think Im being weird, but after living many years in corporate the amount of times you see some major thing go wrong and some random guy get fired for it - often the dude who found/highlighted the problem, is crazy. I mean you simply don't believe it until you witness it. Its just moral/leadership decay.

I wouldn't have made this comment but I see comments with people empathising with certain individuals in cases like this, when the way to be nice is to overhaul the system of checks and people responsible and spread the blame, fixing the domain.

bombcar 44 minutes ago | parent

There's a very "child-like" (not in a good way) form of responsibility that everyone seems to lean into as they climb up - very intent-based.

I asked them to do a thing, but didn't intend the obvious consequences* so it's not my fault they occurred.

tokai 6 minutes ago | parent

Yeah that is a pretty weird opinion. Who cares about if he gets fired. He should be charged with criminal negligence and face prison time. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and its always possible to quit.

aussieguy1234 50 minutes ago | parent

They forgot to write it on a post-it note attached to the monitor /s

ZuoCen_Liu 49 minutes ago | parent

Please enter Password: Password ↵ The password is incorrect: incorrect ↵ Incorrect password, please enter again: Again ↵ ...

bricss 49 minutes ago | parent

If only there was an algorithm for password strength estimation > . <

shevy-java 46 minutes ago | parent

That's my password!!!

Thieves give it back now!

lstodd 39 minutes ago | parent

My password is 123qwe so it's safe for now.

nslindtner 46 minutes ago | parent

Another fact - was only discovered because the invoice for using the lookup was big

ptnpzwqd 37 minutes ago | parent

It is easy to blame the company or individual responsible for making the leak possible, and of course also well justified, but I think the bigger problem is the way the CPR number is used.

Having a unique number that is needed for identifying individuals, but also often used for authentication and thus meant to be kept secret, is bound to go wrong. There are too many situations where these use cases are in conflict, and considering Denmark has MitID - a actual national authentication solution - the CPR number should have been considered public information a long time ago, and shouldn’t ever be usable for obtaining credit or the like on its own. A system keeps insisting this is sensitive information is really the main responsible here.

boxed 9 minutes ago | parent

> Having a unique number that is needed for identifying individuals, but also often used for authentication and thus meant to be kept secret, is bound to go wrong

That's also not how they are used. They're maybe the username, but never the password, and absolutely not supposed to be secret. They are supposed to be extremely public.

mhd 22 minutes ago | parent

They should've just written it in Danish, nothing seems more secure than how they construct numbers. The 56 part would've been "six-and-half-triple-score" or something similarly insane.

eviks 11 minutes ago | parent

Yes, S in Government stands for Security, C - for Competence (or caring about your data), and D - for system Design

wrecked_em 11 minutes ago | parent

That's the kind of password an idiot would have on his luggage.