U.S. Postal Service of Unated States Post Office

The postal service is not financed by budget funds of the USA. It earns due to sales of delivery services of correspondence, sale of stamps and other goods.

History

2018: Disclosure of these 60 million people

On December 10, 2018 Panda Security in Russia reported that the U.S. Postal Service (United States Postal Service, USPS) corrected vulnerability which allowed malefactors to obtain within a year personal information approximately 60 million people, mainly citizens of the USA. About a year ago the anonymous researcher on information security announced in Postal service existence of vulnerability, but USPS could not solve this problem. After long waiting nothing remained to this information security expert how to announce mass media this problem in hope that public attention will cause the corresponding reaction from U.S. Postal Service as the independent agency U.S. Governments. As soon as data on a hole of security became property of the public, the Postal service started elimination of this vulnerability.

The defect in an information security system led to the fact that personal data of people which were signed on Informed Visibility service in USPS became available. This service allows users to obtain end-to-end information that it was possible to monitor delivery by postal service of letters, parcels post, sendings and containers. The exploit allowed any person having basic IT knowledge and a user name and the password to receive and export to API for access to service information on other users. This information contained such personal data as user names, numbers of accounts, the postal addresses, the e-mail addresses, phone numbers and other additional information. As of December 7, 2018 there were no proofs that such personal information as passwords to accounts, bank information or numbers of a social insurance could be opened to strangers.

The representative of Postal service on work with media said that for December 10, 2018 time of USPS has no information that this vulnerability of security was ever used in criminal objectives, but investigation continues still so far. Its purpose is in as a result to guarantee that any who illegally tried to get access to the systems of Postal service and performed some actions will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law. On a question why USPS spent the whole year to cope with a problem which the unnamed expert announced them the representative of USPS said that they have no evidence that that information security expert really addressed them in 2017.

USPS was already connected with incidents: besides that the service is constantly involved in fight between the U.S. President D. Trump and Jeff Bezos from Amazon, in August, 2018 the U.S. Postal Service was forced to apologize to the candidate of the Democratic Party of the USA the former employee of CIA of Abigail Shpanberger for the fact that it accidentally transferred data on it to one of independent committees on expenses (Super PAC), supporting candidates of Republican Party of the USA.

2012: Loss of billions in connection with growth of popularity of payment of accounts on the Internet

Annually the service loses billions of dollars as more and more people use e-mail and pay accounts via the Internet (August, 2012).

In April, 2012 the U.S. Senate adopted the law which had to help postal service to avoid a default. Now the House of Representatives should take necessary actions.

In August, 2012 the management of U.S. Postal Service announced that it for the first time in history will not be able to make contribution to fund of health insurance. It was announced that in August 2 the Postal service will not be able to transfer to the Ministry of Finance the due 5.5 billion dollars. Possibly, as in September the postal service will not have means to make the next payment in the amount of 5.6 billion dollars^[1].

This step will not influence mail delivery, the salary and privileges of employees. Post offices will work in the normal mode.

However it forces to doubt that clients can rely on services of postal service which services the population of the United States of nearly 250 years further.

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