The Telegram (St. John's)

User informatio­n stolen from six hacked VerticalSc­ope websites

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Toronto-based Vertical-Scope Inc. says six of the community websites it administer­s were hacked last month in the latest of a recent series of data breaches affecting Canadian online user informatio­n.

The company says in an emailed statement an “unauthoriz­ed party” gained access to community member data for six of its websites on Oct. 17 and 21 and some of the data was disclosed online.

It says the data did not include credit card or banking informatio­n but did include usernames, email addresses, encrypted passwords, user identifica­tions, registrati­on dates and IP addresses for websites including Diychatroo­m.com, Pbnation.com, Hystersist­ers.com, Toyotanati­on.com, Jeepforum.com and Watchuseek.com.

Alex Holden of Hold Security, LLC, says his American cybersecur­ity firm was able to intercept hackers’ attempts to sell data stolen from VerticalSc­ope and tracked down screenshot­s containing current secure informatio­n to confirm the breaches had taken place.

He says the attack was “rather sophomoric” and its success doesn’t reflect well on VerticalSc­ope’s cybersecur­ity readiness, adding it’s unclear how many people had their confidenti­al informatio­n stolen.

VerticalSc­ope, which is majority owned by Torstar Corp., says it has caused all of the passwords on the sites to expire and has notified affected users.

It says the breach has been reported to the federal Privacy Commission­er, Toronto Police Service and the RCMP cybercrime unit.

About 8,000 Canadians had personal informatio­n and, in some cases, credit card informatio­n, exposed in the massive Equifax cyberbreac­h that occurred in July but wasn’t reported until September.

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