Vancouver’s Goldcorp Inc., one of the world’s biggest gold producers, has acknowledged suffering a data breach, according to a news site.
The Daily Dot said Wednesday the company sent it an email confirming the “network has been compromised.”
“The company’s internal IT security team has been working with leading independent IT security firms to rapidly gather facts, provide information to affected employees and ensure a robust action plan is in place, including immediate preventative modifications to its IT processes and increased network security protocols,” the email said in part.
The Reuters news agency also carried a short story on the breach, saying it was confirmed by Goldcorp. spokeswoman Christine Marks. Two calls by ITWorldCanda.com to Marks, Goldcorp’s director of communications were not returned.
The breach came to light when an unnamed researcher, who wrote the Daily Dot story, was tipped off by alleged hackers that it had gotten their hands on 14.8 Gb of private company and employee documents, and put sample data on a public paste site as well as a link to a full torrent download,
These include bank account information, company budget information, passwords and employee email addresses.
The Daily Dot report says the hackers promised several more dumps of company data will be released.
Goldcorp. has had a rough time in the past year. In 2015 it suffered a US$4.2 billion loss, although this week it reported a first quarter profit. In February it appointed a new CEO, who last month shook up management. Then earlier this month it reported a worker died at its Marlin mine in Guatemala in an underground in a rock fall.
It runs four mines in Canada, three in Mexico and four in Central and South America and employs 15,000 people.