UK intelligence agency stores passwords in plain text

There are some government agencies that most would expect to have a fair grasp of security, even for those systems that are not core to their operations. That's what we thought with the Australian Tax Office's Publication Ordering System, but sadly, we were proven wrong.

University student Dan Farrall discovered that his UK government's communication headquarters (GCHQ) careers site has been sending back passwords in complete plain text. For those of us outside of the UK, GCHQ is one of Britain's intelligence agencies, dealing primarily with signals intelligence and charged with "safeguarding Britain's electronic communications and digital space".