People from Montreal charged with hacking 3 major Canadian companies

People from Montreal charged with hacking 3 major Canadian companies

Two Montreal men have been charged by RCMP against Canadian Tire, Bank of Montreal and CIBC's Simply Financial Bank in 2017 and 2018. Jacob Costanzo-Peterson and Felix Costanzo-Peterson have been charged with unauthorized use of a computer, identification. 

Mounts, after a lengthy investigation, said that to obtain the theft of a device and the unauthorized use of a computer in possession, a Sept 4 news release stated. 

The project "Aerogens" first began in February 2017 after Tire Corp of Canada reported the cyber incident at its Customer Loyalty Awards program. In May 2018, the project "montage" began after BMO and Simpleii Financial reported cyber incidents in their computer systems. 

The RCMP said that in August 2018 it seized several pieces of evidence at two residences, including digital evidence and firearms. The evidence eventually allowed investigators to link the two attacks together, it said. Six months after those seizures, the two were indicted in Quebec court as part of these two investigations into charges related to the prohibited firearms and arms smuggling. But it still took time for the police to accuse them in cyber security incidents. 

A court date is set for the new charges from November 5. After cyber propaganda they may be reluctant to call the police, either fearing bad publicity or hackers are out of the country and cannot be caught. In this case, Alexandre Beaulieu, who led the RCMP cyber crime investigation team in the National Division of the force, credited the three companies. 

“If it were not for the valuable cooperation of these three companies, we would not be able to bring these two individuals to justice. These partnerships are important in solving crimes of this type, which unfortunately sometimes go unrecoverable. "