South Edmonton MPP Thomas Dang pleaded guilty to a fee under the Health Information Act for encryption equipment to infiltrate Alberta’s COVID-19 vaccination records online page last year.
Court documents show that the former NDP MP hacked the online page after receiving a recommendation that fitness data on the portal be easily accessible.
Dang has a background in computing and cybersecurity and used what he called “basic encryption tools” to run PC scripts over a four-day period.
From September 19 to 23, 2021, Dang generated more than 1. 75 million requests. The set of facts states that Dang first conducted checks with his own information, then used former Prime Minister Jason Kenney’s date of birth and vaccination dates to check if he can only access Kenney’s fitness number.
After five attempts, your Internet Protocol (IP) address was blocked. Dang said he bypassed blocking a widely available program (or script) and regained access to the website.
He said he wrote an automated program to check the system. Using it, he discovered the record of who shared Kenney’s birthday and had won a vaccine the same month as the Prime Minister.
Earlier, Dang said that after alerting NDP caucus staff and data transmitted to Alberta Health, the province published a new edition of the page online within a week. The new edition corrected the defect it had identified.
Crown prosecutor Craig Krieger argued that while he believes Dang did not access the data with malicious intent and possibly would have conducted the studies to improve the website, he did so “in the worst way imaginable,” Krieger said in court Friday.
Last November, Alberta Health revealed that it had obtained reports from at least 12 users who had uploaded data to the province’s COVID-19 vaccination registry website. The folder uploaded through those users contained the name, date of birth, and facts about the vaccine. The government said no additional data had been released.
The province changed the online page by adding a CAPTCHA, which asks users to check a box to confirm they are not a robot.
An investigation is also underway through the Privacy Commissioner to find out why the portal was created with flaws leading to imaginable hacking and access to non-public information.
The Crown is a fine of $10,000, while Dang’s defense is less than $4,000 based on a legal principle.
Dang’s sentencing will take place on November 29.
Journalist
Katarina Szulc is a reporter for CBC News in Edmonton. She previously worked at CityNews 1130 in Vancouver. You can email article concepts to Katarina. Szulc@cbc. ca.
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