The Council of Engineers Thailand has warned 350,000 members their personal data was stolen when its database was hacked recently, and could be misused.
Prof Amorn Pimanmas, a director in the council's board, said that a week ago a hacker breached the database containing members’ personal data when it was being transferred between servers.
There were 680,000 data breaches over 10 hours and the data of 350,000 members stolen.
This included names, addresses, phone numbers, licence levels along with other personal details. The affected members worked in the fields of civil engineering, electricity, mechanism, mining, industrial engineering, environment and chemistry.
Prof Amorn warned that scammers might and try to defraud those engineers. The council had yet to confirm if the breached data had been tampered with. Illegal changes to the data could affect members' licence levels.
The data breach could also affect the approaching electronic election of council directors, he said. He asked cybercrime police and the Office of the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) to quickly investigate the matter because “it affects engineers nationwide".
PDPC secretary-general Pol Col Suraphong Plengkham said the matter was serious and an investigation was already underway. The office had recommended ways in which the council could protect its members whose data was stolen.
He said the Council of Engineers Thailand detected the data breaches on April 17.
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