Jamaica | Second Breach of Jamaica’s JamCOVID Website

Jamaica | Second Breach of Jamaica’s JamCOVID Website
Welcome to Montego Bay sign at Montego Bay airport in Jamaica. – Montego Bay, Jamaica / June 26, 2019 (Shutterstock)
 
By WiredJA
 
KINGSTON, February 22, 2021 – As the country awaits the official report on the security breach of the Jamaica government’s JamCOVID immigration site, TechCrunch is reporting that there was a second security lapse that exposed private keys and passwords for the government’s JamCOVID app and website.

According to TechCrunch, the second lapse has since been fixed by the Amber Group, the contractors who built the website.

According to the report, “a security researcher told TechCrunch on Sunday that the Amber Group left a file on the JamCOVID website by mistake, which contained passwords that would have granted access to the backend systems, storage and databases running the JamCOVID site and app.” 

The TechCrunch story explained that “this file, known as an environment variables (.env) file, is often used to store private keys and passwords for third-party services that are necessary for cloud applications to run. But these files are sometimes inadvertently exposed or uploaded by mistake, but can be abused to gain access to data or services that the cloud application relies on if found by a malicious actor.”

It was noted that “the exposed environmental variables file was found in an open directory on the JamCOVID website. Although the JamCOVID domain appears to be on the Ministry of Health’s website, Amber Group controls and maintains the JamCOVID dashboard, app and website.”

TechCrunch went on to say that “the exposed file contained secret credentials for the Amazon Web Services databases and storage servers for JamCOVID. The file also contained a username and password to the SMS gateway used by JamCOVID to send text messages, and credentials for its email-sending server.” 

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