Oh No, Not Another Data Breach In Malaysia!

Lowyat.net reported that personal details of over 220,000 pledgers who registered for organ donation between January 2009 and August 2016 had been compromised.

This data leak reportedly included pledger codes, full names, MyKad and old IC numbers, birth dates, ages, nationalities, genders, races, addresses, emails, as well as phone numbers.

According to the tech website, although the scale of this data breach is nowhere near the mobile phone information leak last year, one serious implication this time is the information of the nominated next-of-kin.

"This doubles up the actual number of records leaked to 440,000, and also links two individuals to each other in a binding relationship – whether it may be husband/wife, siblings or parental," Lowyat.net reported.

So if you have a family member who signed up as an organ donour in the last few years, they could be a victim of another data heist.

The data could have been stolen from a central database because the information seemed to be from government hospitals and National Transplant Resource Centres in Malaysia.

The breach also contains a yearly breakdown of the number of pledgers for each month, categories by age, gender, race, state of origin and type of organs.

Is this really happening or are we talking about a movie plot?

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has yet to find the culprit behind this data breach, but government agencies that collect personal data are urged to draw up immediate security measures to prevent further data breaches, especially pertaining such confidential and sensitive databases, as reported by New Straits Times.

Just when the government called for more people to register as organ donours in Malaysia and this happens. But this doesn't mean that you should forego the idea completely.