An anonymous ethical hacker informed VRT NWS that something seemed to be wrong with the website on which Belgians can subscribe to the new state voucher. The VRT’s technology experts immediately started a search and soon found a data leak.
More specifically, it concerned the fields in which visitors must enter their name, date of birth and zip code. In these fields, visitors could enter the data of any Belgian for a period of time. They were then shown the address details of that person, and sometimes also the name of the legal partner.
VRT NWS immediately notified the Debt Agency, which managed to close the data leak after a few hours. “The fields that are privacy sensitive are now automatically hidden. We will also investigate who has conducted systematic searches,” the agency said.
The new one-year government bond is extremely popular among Belgians. After barely two days, at least 5 billion euros in government bonds have already been purchased.