An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na has confirmed it has regained control of social media accounts after a hack which saw \u201cunauthorised access\u201d to two official profiles on X.<\/p>\n
The accounts @GardaInfo and @GardaTraffic were taken over in a breach related to cryptocurrency on Wednesday night and members of the public were warned not to interact with them.<\/p>\n
The @GardaTraffic and @GardaInfo accounts on X, formerly Twitter, removed some branding and started publishing scores of posts about a cryptocurrency from Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
All posts on both accounts have been removed by the platform, but were seen by thousands of people while live.<\/p>\n
On Thursday evening, garda\u00ed confirmed they had regained control of the accounts but they will remain inactive while the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau carry out its investigations.<\/p>\n
The Garda said the breach was only on X and that there was \u201cno unauthorised access to any Garda systems and that there is no loss or impact on any Garda controlled data\u201d.<\/p>\n
The location on both accounts was changed to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, but the @GardaTraffic account, which has more than 600,000 followers, still claims it is the Garda account for traffic and road safety updates.<\/p>\n
The @GardaInfo account, which has almost 300,000 followers, was rebranded to appear to be the support account for a cryptocurrency wallet.<\/p>\n
Cybersecurity expert Brian Honan said the incident was \u201cembarrassing\u201d for the Garda as the organisation tasked with tackling crime instead fell victim to it.<\/p>\n
However, he said the \u201chijacking\u201d of corporate accounts is not unusual as attackers often seek out high-profile accounts with trusted names and a large amount of followers.<\/p>\n
Olga Cronin, head of policy at the the Irish Council of Civil Liberties, said any hack of a State agency or body\u2019s systems or online accounts is extremely worrying.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na is entrusted with extremely sensitive and personal information, and their social media accounts could contain valuable personal information via direct messages for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unclear how these accounts were taken over and the extent of the harm or exposure.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cBut secure collection, storage, use and deletion of data \u2013 whether it is gathered through social media, tech like body-worn cameras or people walking into a Garda station to report a crime \u2013 are essential to An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na\u2019s operation and all of our safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na and X should explain to the public what has happened as soon as is practicable, in order to address public concern.\u201d \u2013 Additional reporting: PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na has confirmed it has regained control of social media accounts after a hack which saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,72,30750,3312,61,60,58,6606,606],"class_list":["post-656365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-business","tag-cryptocurrencies","tag-cybersecurity","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-social-media","tag-twitter","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}