Employees of House of Commons Targeted by Phishing Scam

Macleans.ca reported on 12th June, 2015 stating that hackers are targeting employees of the House of Commons, the Lower House of Canadian Parliament, to look for their personal information.

IT staff of House of Commons sent a memo on the morning of 12th June, 2015 stating that its employees along with workers of private sector are currently being targeted by many cyberattacks.

The House of Commons had issued an email to around 1,500 employees with a warning asking them to be careful about suspicious emails requesting for personal information.

The memo says that hackers have stolen hefty volume of personal data during their attacks.

Macleans.ca published news on 12th June, 2015 according to which Heather Bradley, Director of Communications for the Office of Speaker, says that there is no evidence found about theft of personal data from Commons accounts but confirms that they have been targeted.

It seems from the memo that hackers are sending phishing emails which look like they are coming from official accounts but actually they are technological ploy to trick recipients in disclosing personal information.

United States Office of Personal Management, the human resources (HR) Department for federal workers, has revealed earlier that Nadeem Douba, a white hat hacker based in Ottawa has worked with Canadian governments on security concerns before and warned against taking the email as a symbol of major attack.

Last year, a phishing scam with the hallmarks of a state-sponsored attack permitted hackers in the systems of the National Research Council. Hackers have also embezzled information from Revenue Agency of Canada and cyberattacks have also compelled government departments to close down online services for public and employee's access to Internet for the time being.

The attack, which was attributed to China, had stolen over four million personnel files of former and present employees of U.S. federal containing detailed information of employee's families, their personal histories and salaries.

iPolitics published news on 12th June, 2015 quoting Douba as saying "It looks like a normal warning. They may see more than usual volume of spear-phishing emails in their filters and I wouldn't read too much in this till now."

» SPAMfighter News - 6/24/2015