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Estonian e-residency system discovers security flaws

Wednesday 6 September 2017 10:05 CET | News

The Estonian government has identified security risks within its electronic residency system, affecting almost 750,000 residents.

The managing director of e-Residency announced for The Register that the Estonian authorities took precautionary measures to minimise the risk, including closing the public key database. Nevertheless, the government said the security risk is still theoretical and is not aware that anyones digital identity has been misused. Still, according to security consultants holding Estonian residency, this is not the first time there have been issues with the e-ID card.

The good news is that ID cards issued before October 16, 2014, use an alternate chip and are not affected, nor are mobile-IDs. In addition, the use of an ID card is still safe for online authentication and digital signing.

In late 2014 Estonia became the first country to offer electronic residency to people from outside the country, a step that the Estonian government terms as “moving towards the idea of a country without borders”, the online publication continues.


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Keywords: electronic residency, electronic ID, Estonia, Estonian government, ID cards, online security, fraud prevention
Categories: Fraud & Financial Crime
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Countries: World
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Fraud & Financial Crime






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