Canada Post confirms data breach

The breach occured after Commport Communications, an electronic data exchange solution supplier used by the corporation, had been targeted by a malware attack.

In a statement on May 26, Canada Post said it had been told on May 19 by Commport Communication that it had suffered a data breach. The data stolen related to shipping manifest data which was held in their systems. 

”Shipping manifests are used to fulfill customer orders. They typically include sender and receiver contact information that you would find on shipping labels, such as the names and addresses of the business sending the item and the customer receiving it,” said Canada Post.

Following a detailed forensic investigation, it was found that the shipping manifests for 44 commercial customers - containing information related to over 950,000 customers had been compromised. 

There was no evidence to show that any financial information was breached.

The exposed data covered July 2016 to March 2019, with 97% of the records consisting of names and addresses of receiving customers, whilst the remainder (3%) consisted of email addresses and/or phone numbers.

“We are now working closely with Commport Communications and have engaged external cybersecurity experts to fully investigate and take action.”