A CBC investigation found that more than 1.5 million Canadian Crime Stoppers tips spanning 25 years were exposed in a breach of the P3 Global Intel tip-management platform. About 850,000 records contained personally identifiable information, including addresses, phone numbers, emails, license plates and some banking details. Longtime Slashdot reader doconnor shares the report: The data was stolen last March by hacktivist collective Internet Yiff Machine. In a manifesto, the group said it wanted to disprove the claim by P3 Global Intel -- the company hired by Crime Stoppers to manage its tips -- that the platform was "anonymous" and "secure." A copy of the hacked data was made available to researchers and journalists, including CBC, by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a U.S. non-profit that archives and publishes hacked and leaked documents it deems to be in the public interest. The report found that more than 4,300 Crime Stoppers tipsters identified themselves by their full name, with hundreds of records containing staff warnings that individuals had "self-identified" or been "exposed," yet their information remained unredacted.

The leaked data included sensitive allegations involving murder, terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, with nearly 49,000 tips linked to cases cleared through arrests or criminal charges. Cybersecurity experts criticized the retention of decades-old records... "If a tip is closed, does that need to stay online?" asked cybersecurity expert Ben Coon. "The answer to that, to me, is no."

The RCMP was initially told Canadian data was unaffected, then assured that exposed Canadian records contained no personally identifiable information. This appears to contradict the CBC's findings. Furthermore, affected individuals have not been systematically notified because contacting them could further jeopardize their anonymity.

"For a system that has been designed to promise anonymity to the users, that has failed categorically," said Prof. Ali Dehghantanha, the Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity and Threat Intelligence at the University of Guelph.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.