Last summer, a hacker gained access to personal information tied to hunting and fishing licenses in Oregon, Idaho and Washington. The breach involved 7 million records.
Since then, Washington rolled out a new, more secure online system last month, but it hasn’t been entirely seamless.
Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife had already planned to upgrade its online licensing system before the hack. Peter Vernie manages the Department’s Licensing Division. and he admitted there have been a few glitches.
“We had some duplication of licenses,” he said. “We had some problems getting some catch record cards to print.”
Now, hunters and anglers need usernames and passwords, and that’s caught a few off guard.
The agency couldn’t start selling 2017 licenses online December 1, as it usually does, because the system wasn’t quite ready. But Vernie said he doesn’t expect that will impact sales or revenue.
Close to a million people buy nearly 2.5 million hunting and fishing license each year. Vernie said that brings in roughly $55 million in revenue.