- Hackers breached Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office systems
- 337,000 LAPD files stolen, including personnel and internal affairs data
- Published file of the “World Leaks” group, later deleted
Cybercriminals reportedly broke into the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office and stole sensitive data belonging to the Los Angeles Police Department.
He Los Angeles Times reported that “a trove of confidential Los Angeles police records,” including officer personnel files and documents from Internal Affairs investigations, had been captured by cybercriminals.
About 337,000 files measuring 7.7 terabytes were reportedly accessed, which also included disciplinary records and misconduct allegations, discovery documents from civil litigation cases, personal health information of officers, and witness interviews from criminal investigations.
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World leaks
The LAPD issued a brief statement confirming the findings, noting: “LAPD is aware of an incident within the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office where unauthorized persons gained access to a digital storage system. The digital storage contained discovery documents from previously adjudicated or resolved LAPD civil litigation cases. The breach does not involve any LAPD system or network,” it said.
“We take this incident very seriously and are working with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office to gain access to the affected files and understand the full scope of the data breach. LAPD is committed to safeguarding its confidential personnel and investigative information.”
Meanwhile, a hacker collective calling itself World Leaks posted the entire file on its data breach site. Emma Best, founder of transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets, confirmed the authenticity of the breach and later said the files were removed from the website.
“I don’t see it on the World Leaks site anymore, not even when I logged in. It’s not clear what happened,” he said.
Typically, cybercriminals demand payment of a ransom in exchange for deleting data. Neither World Leaks nor the Los Angeles police confirmed that anything like this happened.
World Leaks is a spinoff of a previous group called Hunters International, famous for breaching healthcare, manufacturing and technology giants.
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