Data Breach

95,000 job seekers affected by the McDonald’s Canada data breach

A Canadian flag waves beside McDonalds fast food restaurant in Toronto, May 1, 2014. About 400,000 people came to Canada under the government's temporary foreign worker program, which is designed to fill jobs for which there are no qualified Canadian candidates. The program has been hugely popular with employers, ballooning from 100,000 workers in 2002. But the backlash against it has also grown as the program, initially designed to help the booming resource industry, has expanded to lower-skilled jobs, especially at restaurant chains such as McDonald's Corp and Tim Hortons Inc. To match Feature CANADA-EMPLOYMENT/TEMPORARY REUTERS/Mark Blinch (CANADA - Tags: BUSINESS EMPLOYMENT FOOD POLITICS)

The McDonald’s Canada career website was recently subject to a cyber-attack. Hackers stole records of 95,000 job seekers.

McDonald’s Canada confirmed that hackers have stolen the personal data of about 95,000 job seekers from its recruitment website.

The data were provided by candidates searching for a job at McDonald’s Canada since March 2014. The company has launched an investigation into the data breach that exposed job candidates’ names, addresses, emails, telephone numbers, employment histories and other personal data.

“The McDonald’s Canada (“McDonald’s”) career website (http://www.mcdonalds.ca/ca/en/careers.html or http://www.mcdonalds.ca/ca/fr/careers.html) was recently subject to a cyber-attack.” reads the data breach notification published by the company.

“As a result, the personal information of approximately 95,000 restaurant job applicants has been compromised. Applicants affected are those who applied online for a job at a McDonald’s Canada restaurant between March 2014 and March 2017. “

McDonald’s Canada has shut down the recruitment website, fortunately the company doesn’t request sensitive data such as health information, social insurance numbers and financial information.

The company confirmed that it is not aware of any abuse of the stolen data.

“The careers webpage will remain shut down until the investigation is complete and appropriate measures are taken to ensure that this type of security breach does not happen again,” continues the breach notification.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – McDonald’s Canada, data breach)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.