Goldcorp hacked, second Canadian gold miner since last year

Reams of private employee data, banking information and confidential company documents from Goldcorp. Inc. (TSX:G) may soon be flooding through bit torrent sites, following a massive cyber breach.

Goldcorp has confirmed the company was hacked.

“Goldcorp confirmed today that the company’s network has been compromised and is working to determine the full scope and impact of the incident,” communications director Christine Marks said in an email. “The appropriate authorities have been notified and an investigation is underway.”

“The company’s internal IT security team has been working with leading independent IT security firms to rapidly gather facts, provide information and support to affected employees and ensure a robust action plan is in place, including immediate preventative modifications to its IT processes and increased network security protocols.”

The breach was first reported by the Internet news site, The Daily Dot.

According to dailydot.com, hackers claimed to have accessed a massive amount of Goldcorp data and provided a bit torrent link on a public paste site.

Dailydot.com confirmed that the data appears to contain internal communications, banking information and wire transfers, payroll information, international contacts and even employee logins and passwords.

It’s not clear whether the hacking was corporate sabotage or mere black hat mischief.

According to dailydot.com, the hackers claimed they were preparing several more data dumps, which they threatened to make available for download.

Goldcorp is the second Canadian gold mining company to be hacked. Last year, Toronto-based Detour Gold Corp. (TSX:DGC) had its servers hacked. The hackers were apparently based in Russia.

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Read article at Business in Vancouver