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

If a victim fell for the scam and tried to login to the spoof website, they would be handing over their credentials to criminals

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.

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.

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Only email addresses and phone numbers had been stolen by unknown hackers, the statement said, making the breach a “non-materia