Rio Tinto staff's personal data may have been hacked - memo
FILE PHOTO: The Rio Tinto logo is displayed above the global mining group's booth at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada annual conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada March 7, 2023. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo
:Personal data of Rio Tinto Ltd's former and current Australian employees may have been stolen by a cybercriminal group, according to a staff memo seen by Reuters on Thursday.
Payroll information, like payslips and overpayment letters, of a small number of employees from January 2023 had possibly been seized by the group, the memo showed.
"Investigations now indicate a possibility that Rio Tinto data may be impacted," it said.
The cybercriminal group threatened to release the data onto the dark web and investigations into the incident were ongoing, the Anglo-Australian mining giant added.
"To date, none of the records described above have been released, and we still do not know if the cybercriminal group holds these records or not."
The stolen data relates to an attack on GoAnywhere - a managed file transfer (MFT) software offered by cybersecurity firm Fortra - which also provides its services to Rio.
As GoAnywhere is a cloud-based vendor, there is no operational impact or risk to the Rio Tinto network, the memo said.
