Email inboxes, ‘sensitive personal information’ accessed in B.C. government hack

The B.C. government has confirmed sensitive digital information was compromised during a cyberattack detected in its networks on April 10.

At a Monday press conference, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said hackers may have accessed 22 email inboxes, some of which contained “sensitive personal information” on 19 people.

2:03 B.C. government confirms emails, personal information affected in cyberattack

The sensitive information was employee personnel files, with one exception involving a worker who had family information in their email.

Farnworth said the investigation has not found any sensitive information collected by the government related to the delivery of public services.

“At this time we have no indication that the general public’s information was accessed,” he said.

“We have not identified any misuse of this information or found evidence the actor accessed specific files.”

Farnworth said he could not comment on which ministries were affected while the investigation was underway, but confirmed that the email accounts did not belong to cabinet ministers.

He added that affected people had been notified directly.

The investigation hasn’t found evidence specific files were accessed or that the information was misused. The province is providing credit monitoring and identity protection services to those affected for two years.

1:57 B.C. cyberattack was likely state directed says province

Farnworth reiterated that the government was confident the attack was led by a “state or state-sponsored actor.”

The province has not specified which state could be responsible.

In a separate statement earlier Monday, the federal Ministry of Public Safety warned of an uptick in cyberattacks originating from foreign states.

The federal government named China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as countries “conducting wide-ranging and long-term campaigns to compromise government and private sector computer systems.:

The B.C. government government has previously defended withholding information about the cyberattack until early May, saying it needed to investigate the breach and shore up defences before revealing potential weaknesses in the system.