Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Thousands of Canadian Government Accounts Hacked

Thousands of user accounts for online government services in Canada were recently hacked during cyber attacks, authorities said Saturday.

The attacks targeted the GCKey service, used by some 30 federal departments and Canada Revenue Agency accounts, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat explained in a press release.

Thousands of user accounts for online government services in Canada were recently hacked during cyber attacks, authorities said Saturday.

The attacks targeted the GCKey service, used by some 30 federal departments and Canada Revenue Agency accounts, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat explained in a press release.

The passwords and usernames of 9,041 GCKey account holders “were acquired fraudulently and used to try and access government services,” the authorities said.

All affected accounts have been cancelled. 

About 5,500 Canada Revenue Agency accounts were targeted in this and another attack, the authorities said, adding that access to these accounts has been suspended to protect taxpayer information.

An investigation was launched by the government and the federal police to determine whether there were any breaches of privacy and whether information was obtained from these accounts, the authorities said. 

According to the CBC, a number of Canadians have reported since the beginning of August that their banking information associated with their Canada Revenue Agency accounts has been altered. 

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Payments related to the Canadian Emergency Benefit, a financial assistance package put in place by the government in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, have also been issued in their names without their request.

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Artificial Intelligence

The degree of danger that may be introduced when adversaries start to use AI as an effective weapon of attack rather than a tool...