Stark Court Hacker’s (CJIS) Database May Have Accessed 300,000 Driver’s License Information

CANTON – Canton Municipal Court officials have notified nearly 300,000 people nationwide that an unauthorized person may have accessed some of their personal information.

Kody Gonzalez, deputy clerk of Canton Municipal Court, said someone could have accessed the driver’s license information of people who received a traffic ticket or had a criminal case in Stark County.

Information is stored in the Stark County Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS), the online database of court records for the Stark County court system and municipal courts in Canton, Massillon and Alliance.

Gonzalez, project manager of the online court database, said the unauthorized user did not breach the system and no servers or internal operations were compromised.

Here’s what you need to know:

Authorities detected the suspicious activity in July

Gonzalez said someone hacked into a CJIS user account on July 23 and wrote computer code that executed multiple queries in the system. Authorities detected the suspicious activity on July 25.

It said the compromised user account was a standard public account and could not access sensitive information available to authorized court personnel and law enforcement officials.

“They didn’t actually hack the system,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said staff quarantined and deactivated the account and hired a cybersecurity company to investigate the suspicious activity. August 29, the company determined that the unauthorized user potentially accessed names and addresses, which are already publicly viewable on starkcjis.org, as well as driver’s license information, which is not publicly viewable.

The review found no evidence that anyone’s Social Security number, medical information or banking information was compromised, Gonzalez said.

He also said the information in the driver’s license field was often incorrect, instead providing a license plate number or the motorist’s speed when cited.

Nearly 300,000 people nationwide could be affected

The cybersecurity company identified 269,276 people whose information could have been accessed.

Gonzalez said the information is limited to people who have had a traffic violation or criminal case in Stark County.

The city’s insurance company began sending letters to potentially affected users on Oct. 11 and has notified attorney general’s offices in states where notification is required.

A search of state attorney general’s offices with online data breach databases shows that 333 Texas residents, 12 Massachusetts residents, 11 Maine residents and three Montana residents were notified.

Free credit monitoring is offered

Canton is offering free credit monitoring services for one year to potentially affected individuals. Information on how to register is included in the notification letter. Those who did not receive a letter but believe their information could have been included can call 1-855-577-8999 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Canton has strengthened security to prevent future hacking attempts

Gonzalez said the city has already improved the security of the online court database in a variety of ways, such as disabling a user’s ability to make multiple queries, remove the frame or use a third-party or no-party app. browser to access it. Data filters, two-factor verification, and detection software that will prompt suspicious users to verify that they are human have also been added. Outdated user accounts will also be locked and users will need to verify their identity before regaining access.

He said other security features are also being added to accounts that can access sensitive data.

Contact Canton Repository editor Kelli Weir at 330-580-8993 or [email protected].

This article was originally published on The Repository: A hacker may have obtained driver’s license information from the Stark court database.