Front door access to a council’s internal network was possible in less than a pound by a security expert.

eBay Sold second Hand kits . Beware.

A security expert called Andrew Mason from a security firm known as Random Storm purchased a network hardware device at an auctioned at eBay. The expense for him 99p.

When the device was switched ON and plugged In, it automatically got connected to the internal network of Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire.

eBay Sold second Hand kits . Beware.

eBay Sold second Hand kits . Beware.

Mr. Mason had purchased a VPN (Virtual Private Network) server for 99p manufactured by Cisco systems whose all the steps are automated steps required for remote access to any network.

Honored admittance:

At just an expense of 99p, Mr. Mason purchased a VPN server which is an abbreviation of Virtual Private Network server. This was manufactured by Cisco Systems which has automated steps required for remote access to a network.

Usually, after powering On the new hardware, the device should ask for device settings to be submitted, but in Mr. Mason’s case no prompt appeared, it directly got connected to the previous destination where it was used.

Further investigation showed that the internet or IP or the address to which it got connected was the owner of Cap Gemini which was in a range of addresses assigned to Kirklees Council.

If it was fallen into wrong hands such as hackers or web maniacs, it could have given them enough privilege to exploit the network without anyone knowing that it’s been done so.

Now, though Kirklees council spokesperson are admitting that the council was deeply with the report but yet was confident that the multiple layer security had prevented access to systems and data.