Canada Post Says 950,000 Customers Hit by Breach at Supplier

Canada Post, the primary postal operator in Canada, has informed 44 of its large business customers that some information was compromised as a result of a malware attack at a supplier.

The impacted supplier is Commport Communications, an electronic data interchange (EDI) provider that Canada Post uses to manage shipping manifest data for large parcel business customers.

In a May 14 post seen by SecurityWeek on a popular hacking forum, someone claimed that a ransomware gang known as Lorenz had stolen tens of gigabytes of data from Commport.

Canada Post said it learned about the data breach on May 19, but its IT subsidiary, Innovapost, was informed in November 2020 that there had been a ransomware attack on Commport. However, at the time, Commport claimed it had found no evidence that customer data was compromised.

According to Canada Post, the attackers gained access to shipping manifests, which are used to fulfill customer orders and which typically include contact information for the sender and recipient.

An investigation conducted by the organization revealed that the information of more than 950,000 receiving customers was stored in the compromised shipping manifests. For 97 percent of these customers, only their name and address was stored, and for the remaining 3 percent the files also included an email address and/or phone number. The compromised information was collected between July 2016 and March 2019.

“We are proactively informing the impacted business customers and providing the information and support necessary to help them determine their next steps. As well, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has been notified,” Canada Post said.

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