A Montreal hacker has pleaded guilty to having participated in the massive theft of personal data of Quebec teachers in 2017 and 2018.
Rath Pak, 43, entered his guilty plea Monday morning at the Montreal courthouse.
This major data theft was discovered in April 2018: the Ministry of Education then contacted the Sûreté du Québec, having understood that a large number of teachers had been victims of identity theft, can we read in the agreed statement of facts of the case, filed in court on Monday morning.
According to the information provided, an account in the computer system named “recognized academic classification of teaching staff” (ICARE), presented connection anomalies from several IP addresses and several countries. This ICARE system is mainly used by human resources departments.
“It includes all the personal information of all teachers in Quebec, retired or not, and regardless of the school board to which they are affiliated,” he was told in court.
Rath Pak was charged in 2020, along with two other men, after a lengthy police investigation.
360,000 teachers
The police discovered that it was the account of a union adviser who had been hacked: her user code and password had been stolen.
The individuals at fault thus had access to a database containing the personal information of nearly 360,000 teachers, the ministry had revealed.
During their cyber investigation, the police were able to identify six places in Montreal and the surrounding area where connections had been made. In February 2019, searches were carried out at the home of Rath Pak, his neighbor – the accused having used his login address without his knowledge – as well as two other people.
Two computers seized from Rath Pak had connections matching some made to the ICARE site, as well as teachers’ banking information, social security numbers and date of birth.
The accused chose not to go to trial: he pleaded guilty to three counts including unauthorized use of a computer, possession of personal information without authorization, and unlawful possession of these informations.
He will have to return to court for his sentence to be determined.