blog That shiny new e-health platform which the Federal Government sent live this week? The one you’re supposed to put all of your most personal medical information in, for sharing only between your cadre of closed-lipped medical professionals? Yup. It was reportedly hacked during its development. The Australian reports (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“The federal government’s e-health platform was hacked while being developed but the incident went undetected for several months.”

Now, we’re not sure precisely what occurred yet or who broke into the new system, but it’s worth noting that it has been predicted before that the system would be broken into. In March this year, security organisation AusCERT baldly stated that the system would inevitably be hacked. At the time, your writer agreed. I wrote back then:

“AusCERT’s concerns are legitimate ones. Creating a huge, centralised, government-run database of electronic health records is an activity which will no doubt draw online criminals and fraudsters like flies to a honeypot. There is absolutely no doubt that the security of the Government’s e-health records project will be defeated at various points, due simply to the fact that thousands of Australians will be accessing the database from insecure computers. When the endpoint cannot be secured, neither can the centralised data.”

It will be interesting to see how the Department of Health and Ageing responds to the allegations. It’s not precisely the best way to kick off this sensitive initiative.