The president of the Fraternal Order of Police announced on social media that there was a data breach by unidentified hackers that lead to information being dumped online.
FOP National President Chuck Canterbury said that while the social security numbers of members are not stored in the organizations records, all of it members' names and addresses were stolen.
While the breach is being resolved, FOP's website has been taken offline and the Department of Justice Cyber Crimes Division and the FBI have been called in to investigated the crime.
Here is Canterburry's statement posted on the FOP's Facebook page:
The FOP has been the victim of federal and state crimes. We have already contacted the Department of Justice Cyber Crimes Division and the FBI will be investigating the crime.
Here is what we know:
Around January 13/14, someone hacked into our data system. Whoever did this found a found a hole in our defenses that even the software developer did not know existed. The platform software was accessed through a method known as 0Day vulnerabilities. This is described as a flaw in the base software that was used to write our program. They stole all of the information that we store in our system.
We do not keep your social security number in our records but all of our member’s names and addresses were stolen. Some members had their date of birth connected to their member file and that was stolen to. We know all too well that this could place our members safety at risk.
The media and the hacker seems to think the theft of the collective bargaining agreements we had on file is a big deal, apparently not knowing that all of these documents are publicly available.
Here is what we are doing:
We have taken fop.net offline. We have contracted with experts to work with our IT team to make sure that this does not happen again. We are working to put in place a workaround for lodge presidents and secretaries to keep doing the business of the Order while we are completing our work on this end.
We are taking this crime very seriously and we appreciate the members concerns and understand your concerns and are working hard to secure our system.
Paul Peluso | Editor
Paul Peluso is the Managing Editor of OFFICER Magazine and has been with the Officer Media Group since 2006. He began as an Associate Editor, writing and editing content for Officer.com. Previously, Paul worked as a reporter for several newspapers in the suburbs of Baltimore, MD.
