An anonymous reader writes “A major security hole in the City of Johannesburg’s online billing system has meant that customer invoices have been visible on the open web with a bit of simple parameter phishing. Change a digit in the URL for your bill, and someone else’s appears. Including major corporations like the roads agency, SANRAL (which is R55 000 in arrears, apparently). Neighboring Ekhuruleni had a similar problem too. Both problems were discovered by regular visitors at a local IT forum, and it’s interesting to compare the two cities reactions. Ekhuruleni quietly and quickly fixed the problem, while Joburg has threatened legal action against the user — who tried to raise the issue with the city IT team several times before going public. Legal experts say there’s a potential case for a class action.”… An anonymous reader writes “A major security hole in the City of Johannesburg’s online billing system has meant that customer invoices have been visible on the open web with a bit of simple parameter phishing. Change a digit in the URL for your bill, and someone else’s appears. Including major corporations like the roads agency, SANRAL (which is R55 000 in arrears, apparently). Neighboring Ekhuruleni had a similar problem too. Both problems were discovered by regular visitors at a local IT forum, and it’s interesting to compare the two cities reactions. Ekhuruleni quietly and quickly fixed the problem, while Joburg has threatened legal action against the user — who tried to raise the issue with the city IT team several times before going public. Legal experts say there’s a potential case for a class action.”

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