The Canadian authorities announced Saturday that hackers had recently succeeded in penetrating thousands of electronic accounts of users of government services via the Internet.
The General Secretariat of the Canadian Treasury said in a statement that the attacks targeted the "GCK" service used by about 30 federal ministries, and accounts of the Canadian Revenue Agency.
She added that the passwords and usernames of 9041 accounts on the "GCK" service were "fraudulently obtained and used to try to access government services."
The statement confirmed that all accounts affected by the attack were canceled.
According to the statement, the pirates targeted about 5,500 accounts of the Canadian Revenue Agency, noting that, as a result, access to these accounts was suspended "to protect taxpayer data."
The statement emphasized that the government and the Federal Police had opened an investigation "to determine whether there was any breach of privacy and whether information was obtained from these accounts."
