Former Fujitsu IT assist staff had been ‘legalised hackers’
Fujitsu workers within the Put up Workplace Horizon assist centre might have stolen cash from subpostmasters with out them understanding however by no means did, in line with 2015 whistleblower interview.
In keeping with former Fujitsu tech employee turned important scandal whistleblower Richard Roll, distant entry auditing guidelines may very well be ignored by a staff of “legalised hackers” who used backdoors to entry department accounts.
Roll – who labored within the Fujitsu assist centre from 2001 to 2004, providing third-line tech assist to subpostmasters – gave proof within the Excessive Courtroom which helped subpostmasters to reveal the reality in regards to the Put up Workplace and Fujitsu’s remedy of subpostmasters.
The newest data from the recorded 2015 interview comes as Fujitsu’s European boss Paul Patterson prepares to face MPs within the enterprise and commerce choose committee, the place he’ll face questions over Fujitsu’s function within the scandal and the steps it’s taking present redress to victims.
Roll gave proof within the 2018/19 Group Litigation Order (GLO) for subpostmasters led by campaigning former subpostmaster Sir Alan Bates, who had been suing the Put up Workplace after they had been blamed and punished for accounting shortfalls brought on by laptop errors.
Round 800 subpostmasters had been wrongly blamed for accounting shortfalls and convicted of economic crimes between 2000 and 2015, based mostly on flawed proof type the Horizon system. The Put up Workplace Horizon scandal additionally noticed many extra subpostmasters lose their livelihoods and have their lives turned the wrong way up after being blamed.
Hacking the system
In a recorded interview with forensic investigator Ron Warmington from Second Sight in 2015, months after the agency was sacked by the Put up Workplace from its function in investigating the Horizon system, Roll mentioned Fujitsu workers circumvented auditing of distant entry to accounts.
Roll advised Warmington: “The system was fairly stuffed with holes after I was there. The blokes I used to be working with had been simply legalised hackers and so they might crack something.”
Presently, the Put up Workplace was utilizing its personal prosecution powers to ship subpostmasters to court docket or power them into plea bargains. Tons of had been wrongly convicted because of this.
Roll mentioned the engineers by no means stole cash however admitted it was potential for them to take action: “We might simply hack in by means of the backdoor and do what we needed. If we needed to, we might have hacked in and stolen a great deal of cash, however we by no means did.”
The Put up Workplace lastly admitted that distant entry was potential on the GLO and unaudited entry was later described by a former Fujitsu IT boss throughout a Put up Workplace scandal public inquiry listening to in Might 2023. Within the listening to, it was revealed that Fujitsu had no management over workers in one among its tech assist groups accessing Put up Workplace department accounts remotely to make modifications which may very well be hidden from subpostmasters.
Whereas it was already revealed that distant entry was potential, the dearth of management of this entry shed additional mild on Fujitsu’s lax practices supporting its error-prone system. The general public inquiry heard that workers working at Fujitsu’s Software program Help Centre (SCC), which supplies third-line tech assist to Put up Workplace branches, had “unrestricted and unauditable” distant entry to department accounts.
Stephen Parker, a former SCC supervisor, confronted the general public inquiry in its present section, which is investigating the operation of the controversial Horizon system. Throughout questioning, he admitted that management of SCC workers remotely accessing department techniques relied on them being reliable and following the entry coverage, with no policing of their exercise.
Fujitsu had not responded to a request for remark by the point this text was revealed.
The Put up Workplace scandal was first uncovered by Laptop Weekly in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered because of the accounting software program (see timeline of Laptop Weekly articles in regards to the scandal beneath).
