Sunday, 20 September 2009

HMRC NDO notification form could be used maliciously.

I am somewhat dismayed by the disclosure form for email notification of a desire to take advantage of the New Disclosure Opportunity - found here .


(On looking at HMRC's site, I discover they have taken down the offending page)


What's wrong with it?


 It appears to be a perfectly innocuous form.


But it is lacking in several important security features.
  • It asks neither for the taxpayer's reference number or national insurance number. 
  • It does not ask for a valid email address which could be verified,
  • It does not employ any captcha technology to verify that it is being completed by a human being and not a bot.
  • The underlying javascript code (which I have examined) does not check the details entered against a database - merely checking that data exists in the required fields but not the validity of the data entered.
Why does this matter?


As it stands the form could be used by a grudge bearer or malicious individual to make false notification of a desire to take advantage of the New Disclosure Opportunity. This could well involve their hapless, innocent target in a long and fruitless inquiry by HMRC into a non-existent off-shore account.


HMRC needs to be more proffessional in the design of their forms and not produce shoddy, ill-considered rubbish such as this.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMonday, 5 October 2009 at 08:39:00 BST

    Well done, John for drawing our attention to yet another deficiency in HMRC's IT systems.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownFriday, 9 October 2009 at 02:28:00 BST

    HMRC have now redesigned the form to incorporate all the security points mentioned.Pity it had to be publicised to make them do it.

    ReplyDelete

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