Miriam Pinkesz  |  September 24, 2020

Category: Canada

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RCMP care passing parliament hill amid data breach controversy

Confidential police data belonging to 38 Canadian law enforcement agencies has been leaked by a group of so-called “hacktivists” targeting police, reported the RCMP.

The group of hackers successfully seized documents, including internal memos and emails, from police departments across the U.S. Personal information about some police officers was also included in the data leak, called BlueLeaks.

BlueLeaks: RCMP Targeted in Police Data Leak

The group, Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), who call themselves a “transparency collective,” published thousands of documents online this past June. Members of DDoSecrets say the documents were obtained from members of the hacker collective, Anonymous.

The leak came from cyberattacks on American police agencies or their suppliers. Information from police services across the U.S., including emails, training notes and expense reports, was published online.

Although the bulk of the cyberattack targeted U.S. police agencies, the RCMP has confirmed it was one of the law enforcement agencies affected by the leak.

The RCMP said the National Cybercrime Coordination Unit (NC3) and RCMP’s cyber intelligence investigated the data leaks to determine their impact on various RCMP jurisdictions and other Canadian police agencies, according to a recent statement.

American Data Leaks Reach Canada

hacker on computerAccording to the RCMP, Canadian law enforcement data was hacked via U.S. police servers or U.S. law enforcement supplier servers. The Canadian police data was ostensibly only present in the U.S. servers as a result of collaboration between Canadian police forces and their American colleagues.

The data leakage amounts to 269 gigabytes of archive data organized in formats similar to WikiLeaks documents.

RCMP Says No Secret Information Leaked

The RCMP’s statement notes that the leaked information involving Canadian law enforcement did not significantly impact sensitive police operations and was generally only related to “training, administration and unclassified material which is non-sensitive in nature.”

“We found that there was no secret information that was disclosed,” Insp. Daniel Côté, the officer in charge of NC3, told reporters. “All the information that was online was administrative in nature.”

The RCMP declined to identify the other Canadian law enforcement agencies targeted in the data leak due to “privacy and operational reasons.”

However, Steve Waterhouse, a cybersecurity expert and former cybersecurity officer for the Department of National Defence, told CBC News that even administrative data can be destructive if it gets into the wrong hands.

“It could be emails or phone numbers of police officers in that stash of information, and they can sell it or use it to physically harm or harass police officers’ families.”

“As soon as we share information with our partners, we lose control,” says Steve Waterhouse. “Once the data is passed on to the other party, it becomes the partner’s responsibility to protect security.”

Canada Privacy Commissioner Only Notified Three Months After Data Leak

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada received a report from the RCMP regarding the data leak on Sept. 18, almost three months after it occurred.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner said it is reviewing the report and said the incident raises serious concerns, “given the sensitivity of the information involved.”

Flurry of Data Breach Lawsuits Throughout Canada

The RCMP data leak was disclosed at a time when Canadians have launched several class action lawsuits over major data breaches affecting consumers across the country.

Most recently, a B.C. class action will soon go to trial regarding a data breach that targeted the financial institution, Peoples Trust. According to the data breach class action lawsuit, the company failed to install certain software updates and apply patches on the server which held its database, creating security vulnerabilities that were reportedly exploited by cybercriminals operating out of China.

Another class action lawsuit Canada was filed against Blackbaud Inc. and Blackbaud Canada Inc. over an alleged ransomware attack perpetrated by cybercriminals in 2020 that enabled the hackers to access consumers’ personal information.

This summer, a $20.3 million data breach class action lawsuit settlement was reached between Yahoo and Canadian Class Members. The Yahoo data breach class action lawsuit was initially launched in Ontario in December 2016. It alleges that the company failed to adequately safeguard user data, delayed notifying those affected by the data breaches and failed to adequately respond to the data breaches.

As a result of the Yahoo data breaches, Class Members allegedly suffered identity theft or an increased risk of identity theft and incurred costs for credit monitoring in order to mitigate the risks of potential identity theft.

What do you think about the RCMP police data leak? Are you worried that Canadian data shared with the U.S. could be hacked again? Tell us what you think in the comments below!

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