Crime & Safety
Hacker Nabbed 'Some Of LAPD's Most Closely Guarded Records' In Massive Breach: Report
The leak involves 337,000 files concerning the Los Angeles Police Department.
LOS ANGELES, CA — Hackers gained access to a trove of Los Angeles police records in a massive City Hall breach last month, according to a report.
The leak involves 337,000 files, including what the Los Angeles Times described in its report as "some of the LAPD’s most closely guarded records." The documents — some of which were posted online after the hack — included disciplinary histories of Los Angeles Police Department officers and records of investigations into them held by the City Attorney's Office, according to the Times.
The hack was of a digital storage system that "contained discovery documents from previously adjudicated or settled LAPD civil litigation cases," the LAPD said in a statement.
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The breach was centered around a program used by city attorneys to transfer discovery to opposing counsel and litigants.
"After learning of the incident, our office took immediate steps to secure the tool and investigate what information was accessed. We reported the incident to law enforcement and engaged external support, including outside counsel and external forensic support. Our office has been working with city departments, including the City's Information Technology Agency (ITA), to review the data involved in the incident," city attorney spokesman Ivor Pine said in a statement.
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The City Attorney's Office said no other city applications or systems were impacted by the breach.
The Times reported Tuesday that some of the records started showing up online. One of the first accounts to post a file from the hack was @WhosThatCop. The account posts about police accountability. The account's administrator had said a security researcher first disclosed the breach. The files were taken down Tuesday afternoon, according to The Times.
Most police records are private under state law, and when they are used in legal cases the files tend to be significantly redacted.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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