How to Get MUMPS Thirty Years Later: Hacking the Government with FOIA'd Code
Zachary Minneker explores MUMPS, a 1960s programming language powering the VA healthcare system, using FOIA-obtained source code to uncover critical vulnerabilities.
Summary
The Living Fossil of Healthcare Software: MUMPS
Developed in 1966 at Massachusetts General Hospital, MUMPS (M) remains the core operational language running major healthcare electronic record systems across the US government.
Acquiring Source Code via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
Zachary Minneker explains using FOIA requests to legally obtain thousands of lines of government VistA healthcare codebase routines.
Auditing Archaic Syntaxes and Database Routines
Minneker breaks down MUMPS global variables, dynamic code evaluation, and syntax quirks, uncovering severe injection vulnerabilities and authentication bypasses.
Modernizing and Securing Critical Government Healthcare IT
The author discusses the systemic challenges of auditing legacy national infrastructure and provides defensive isolation guidance.
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