The social media passwords of two student-run services’ were accidentally released to the public last week. Maaz Yasin, Feds VP Internal, stated that the leaks were caused by miscommunication issues within the organization, which resulted in the passwords being released in a public council report. Both the Campus Response Team (CRT) and Glow Centre social media account passwords were leaked in the public service report.
“In this situation there was miscommunication, which unfortunately resulted in the two passwords being sent to council,” said Yasin. He also declared that the leak was discovered within minutes and fixed in a matter of hours. “We realized within minutes that the wrong version was sent. I got in touch with the Campus Response Team and Glow and the passwords were changed.”
Yasin continued to explain the procedure by which the service reports are created: one for the students’ council, which is available to the public, and a confidential one.
“The public version is supposed to be meant for public distribution; we send it to the students’ council so that they can see what the services are up to. The private version is meant for internal deals between Feds and the services and is used as a transition document for the exec,” Yasin said.
When asked whether he read the service reports before sending them out, Yasin stated: “Normally I read the reports. In this case I also looked through the reports and I missed the passwords.”
According to Yasin the password leaks will result in more effective ways of revising the service reports before submitting them.
“Now in the going forward we will be more diligent in ensuring that this doesn’t happen again. And I think the most important thing for me and for you and for the students is to realize that no harm was done, and that there was no breach and that the services are using the social media as normal and that the passwords were changed immediately.” said Yasin.
Yasin said that the leaks didn’t disrupt their social media accounts and the groups changed the passwords as soon as possible.
“I told them about the leaks and they went and changed the passwods, so it wasn’t a big deal,” Yasin said.
There isn’t any procedure stating how often the passwords are changed.
“They deal with that, they deal with that internally within their executive team, but that is internal within the services and it depends on the services exec,” Yasin said.
