Two decades of visitor data at the Toronto Zoo stolen in cyberattack

A cyberattack last year exposed information about every visitor to the Toronto Zoo between 2000 and April 2023. 

The Toronto Zoo published a notice this week about the cyberattack in January 2024 following an analysis of the incident to figure out what data was accessed by the hackers. 

Officials from the zoo did not respond to requests for comment about how many people were affected but a notice published this week says the hackers copied transaction data which includes “information about all guests and members” who bought general admission tickets. 

The transaction information had names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. For guests and members who conducted credit card transactions between January 2022 and April 2023, the last four digits of card numbers and expiration dates were stolen by the hackers. 

“A copy of transaction data was taken and was leaked on the dark web last year,” the organization said. “The way the data was leaked has made it difficult to download. It is currently not published, though this could change.”

In addition to the days of operational difficulties caused by the attack, it has been “extremely challenging” because the organization lost decades of wildlife conservation research as a result of the incident. 

The attack was claimed by the Akira ransomware group, which said it stole 133 gigabytes of data that allegedly included confidential agreements, personal files and more.

The zoo said after it first discovered the attack, it also notified affected current and former employees, volunteers and donors. All current and former staff dating back to 1989 likely had information stolen and were offered credit monitoring services. 

In its notice on Wednesday, the zoo warned potential victims to watch out for phishing and online fraud attempts while also regularly checking financial account statements. 

The Toronto Zoo reported the incident to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, which opened an investigation. 

The zoo welcomes more than 1.2 million visitors each year and has one of the most diverse collections of animals of any facility in the world, with more than 5,000.