- Hackers breached LA City Attorney’s Office systems
- 337,000 LAPD files stolen, including personnel and internal affairs data
- Group “World Leaks” published archive, later removed
Cybercriminals have reportedly broken into the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and stolen sensitive data belonging to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The LA Times reported on “a trove of sensitive Los Angeles police records,” including officers’ personnel files and documents from internal affairs investigations, that have been intercepted by cyber crooks.
About 337,000 files totaling 7.7 terabytes were allegedly accessed, which also included disciplinary histories and misconduct complaints, discovery documents from civil lawsuits, personal health information of officers and witness interviews from criminal investigations.
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World leaks
The LAPD released a brief statement confirming the findings, noting, “The LAPD is aware of an incident within the LA City Attorney’s Office in which unauthorized individuals accessed a digital storage system. The digital storage contained discovery documents from previously convicted or settled LAPD civil lawsuits. The breach does not involve any LAPD systems or networks,” it said.
“We take this incident very seriously and are working with the LA City Attorney’s Office to access the affected files to understand the full extent of the data breach. The LAPD is committed to protecting its sensitive personnel and investigative information.”
Meanwhile, a hacking collective calling itself World Leaks posted the entire archive on its data leak site. Emma Best, the founder of the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets, confirmed the authenticity of the breach and later said the files were removed from the website.
“I can no longer see it on the World Leaks site, even logged in. Unclear what happened,” she said.
Usually, cybercriminals would demand a ransom paid in exchange for deleting the data. Neither World Leaks nor the LAPD confirmed that anything of the sort happened.
World Leaks is a spin-off from a former group called Hunters International, notorious for breaking with healthcare, manufacturing and technology giants.
Via TechCrunch
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