Late Thursday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported [1] that a hacker broke into a portion of the government-run website Healthcare.gov back “in July and uploaded malicious software” to the site that people in 36 states use to enroll in health care coverage. When it came to the major broadcast networks covering this story on their evening newscasts on Thursday night, they chose to avoid the story completely.
ABC, CBS, and NBC combined for zero coverage of the latest piece of bad news for ObamaCare and is no surprise for a liberal media that has provided plenty of cover for ObamaCare throughout its implementation.
The Wall Street Journal article said [1] that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discovered the breach on August 25 and while the server affected “was connected to more sensitive parts of the website that had better security protections,” investigators found no “evidence that consumers’ personal data were taken or viewed during the breach.”
Despite that news, the breach “raised concerns among federal officials because of how easily the intruder gained access and how much damage could have occurred.”
An HHS official told the paper that the intrusion was thought to be “the first successful intrusion into the website” as the second year of enrollment on the health insurance marketplace begins on November 15.
Nonetheless, the paper mentioned news of the hacking comes as other cybersecurity incidents within the last week have shaken Home Depot, J.P. Morgan Chase, and the private photos of celebrities stored on their iPhones.
Further, the paper cited additional concerns:
Washington officials said they are concerned an intruder gained access to Healthcare.gov network through a basic security flaw. The server had low security settings because it was never meant to be connected to the Internet, the HHS official said. When the hacker broke in, it was only guarded by a default password, which often is easy to crack.
“The was a door left open,” the official said.
Instead of covering this news on a website millions rely on for enrolling in health insurance through ObamaCare, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir reported that Google will pay at least $19 million to parents whose children downloaded apps without parental consent. Over on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley and NBC Nightly News, they covered the story of a new dinosaur discovered in Argentina that researchers said weighed 65-tons.
— Curtis Houck is News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Curtis Houck on Twitter. [2]