The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as the LDS Church or the Mormon Church, experienced a data breach that included sensitive personal information about Church members, employees, contractors, and friends. Payments and other banking details were not affected.
Within announcement (opens in a new tab) The church said the data breach occurred in late March 2022, but as a law enforcement investigation was ongoing, it was asked to keep the incident confidential.
The church did not identify the threat entity behind the attack, nor did it determine whether malware existed (opens in a new tab) was used, but said US federal law enforcement suspected the hack was “part of a pattern of state-sponsored cyber attacks targeting organizations and governments around the world” that are not intended to harm individuals.
Bank details safe
When hackers managed to get into the Church’s database, they stole “core” data including usernames, membership registry numbers, names, gender information, e-mail addresses, birth dates, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, and preferred language.
While it didn’t affect your donation history or banking information, it’s still enough sensitive data for identity theft, phishing, and other types of fraud.
So far, the Church has seen no evidence that the data is being used in the wild, but urged everyone to be especially vigilant when receiving any e-mail, SMS or phone calls and to be alert to potential fraud attempts.
He also added that the person affected by the incident had already been contacted and that people with additional questions could contact the phone numbers provided here (opens in a new tab).
To keep its members, employees, contractors and friends safe, the Church hired outside forensic experts, alerted US federal law enforcement and “other cybersecurity specialists” who investigated the incident and “further” strengthened the security of church systems. It did not specify in detail what this improvement meant, nor did it provide identity protection services to victims.