Fish & Game Halts Online Sales after System Breach

All license sales were halted earlier this week in response to the discovery of a vulnerability in an outside vendor’s system that was recently exploited to expose personal information about customers in several states, including Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.

Hunters will have to wait to buy licenses until the system is restored, said Unsworth.

Idaho and OR halted online license sales after learning of the breach.

An update on a computer breach in the vendor system for online hunting and fishing license sales. Initial information shows exposed information includes Washington residents’ names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.

“Whether any of Idaho Fish and Game’s license buyers’ information was obtained has not yet been determined”, reads information from the department released Wednesday evening.

The hack involves a third-party vendor called Active Network Outdoors which calls itself the leading provider of licensing systems to the states.

The data breach apparently occurred sometime over the summer, Fish & Game said.

According to the Oregonian, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has not found evidence of its information being breached, despite an unknown individual claiming credit for a hack on the agency’s contact page. Licenses are available from dealers and ODFW offices, a spokeswoman said. Washington announced free fishing days through next Tuesday because of the inconvenience.

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