As the Barbados Revenue Authority continues to deal with the consequences of a cyber security breach, hackers have also hit the Canadian Revenue Authority (CRA).
In an article published by Canada’s Fifth Estate, it was revealed that tens of thousands of taxpayer accounts have been hacked and the CRA paid out more than six million dollars in bogus refunds.
The Canadian Agency contends that hackers used one of the country’s largest tax preparation firms, H&R Block Canada to obtain confidential data.
However, H&R has since refuted claims that the breach originated with them, and that any of the affected tax payers are their clients.
The origin of the attack remains unknown.
The CRA has admitted that it has been hit with more than 31,468 material privacy breaches from march 2020 to December 2023, affecting 62,000 individual Canadian taxpayers.