880,000 phone numbers linked to government accounts stolen in breach

OTTAWA — More than 880,000 Canadians’ phone numbers and 85,000 email addresses used to access federal government web services were stolen by hackers, who then spammed victims with fraudulent messages, National Post has learned. Article content

Late on Sept. 9, the government’s Chief Information Officer revealed in a statement that there had been a “data security incident” impacting Canadians’ data held by the multi-factor authentication provider for CRA, Service Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency’s public-facing portals. Article content

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Only email addresses and phone numbers had been stolen by unknown hackers, the statement said, making the breach a “non-material privacy incident” (meaning it involved only low-risk, low-privacy information