​Attack on Australian Census site didn’t register on global DDoS sensors
Slightly off-topic but I&#x27;ve been having an argument with my friend around the security of census data. I wonder if anybody on HN might be able to shed some light...<p>I made the comment that, potentially, a data breach could result in a flat table containing names, addresses, household incomes, etc being released online. This has obvious potential for easy identity theft, stalking, etc. Mainly due to the existence of name and address (since without these fields an abuser cannot target individuals or individual addresses).<p>My friend insists that it is impossible for a breach to release all of the census information in a denormalised form, as the names and addresses are &quot;unlinked&quot; from the rest of the data and stored in a separate table in a separate system.<p>This does not make sense to me. Do the ABS seriously remove the address column from their data? Wouldn&#x27;t this cripple their ability to do spatial analysis on anything more granular than a suburb level? Security concerns aside, do they seriously pay 300m for data and then throw it away?<p>I wish the ABS would be a little more clear about exactly what they do with the data...