After the IT system of the Helsinki City Hall was hacked, the personal data of around 300,000 people were leaked, according to a report by an investigative team appointed by the government, which investigated the effects of the largest hacker attack in Finland in terms of the number of people affected.
This concerns a break-in into the database of the Helsinki City Education Department, which took place last spring. As a result of the break-in into the official IT system, confidential data of students attending schools and kindergartens in the Finnish capital, as well as their guardians and the entire staff of city institutions, fell into the wrong hands.
Earlier, before the investigation was launched, it was reported that the data leak affected a smaller number of people, i.e. around 80-100 thousand, and the stolen data included personal identification numbers, e-mail contacts, user names, residential addresses, as well as information on fees, granted social benefits, and data of people in a restricted register.
The report, published Tuesday, which still describes the perpetrator as “unknown,” noted that the data could be used for malicious purposes, such as identity theft and fraud. During the nearly year-long investigation, there was no information that the data was used in this way, the conference reported. “However, one must be aware that whenever data is stolen, it can be used even after a long time,” said Hanna Tiirinka, who heads the independent investigation team.
Parallel proceedings in the case are being conducted by the Central Criminal Police Office and the Office of the Personal Data Protection Commissioner.
Last year, immediately after the incident, city hall representatives also indicated that “suspicious network traffic could have come from Russia.”
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