Hackers target thousands of Canadian government accounts

Canadian authorities have said on Saturday 15 August, 2020, that thousands of user accounts for online government services in Canada were recently hacked during cyberattacks.

The attacks targeted the GCKey service, used by some federal departments and Canada Revenue Agency accounts, according to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat 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.

The authorities have taken action against the attempted attacks, including cancellation of all affected account.

About 5,500 Canada Revenue Agency accounts were targeted in the latest and another attack, but access to these accounts has been suspended to protect taxpayer information.

The authorities said the government and the federal police have launched an investigation to determine whether there were any breaches of privacy and whether information was obtained from there accounts.

Since the beginning of August, this year, a large number of Canadians have reported that their banking information linked to their Canada Revenue Agency accounts has been altered.

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