What is Operation Endgame?
The Queen’s IT Services Security team recently became of the following. On May 30, 2024 international law enforcement agencies announced that they took several of the most influential malware families offline in the “largest ever operation against botnets". A listing of usernames that included those of Queen's account holders for 3rd party services, were shared with IT Services. As a precaution, Queen’s IT Services will expire the passwords of any Queen’s account found to be listed on the breached accounts list to ensure that the password posted will no longer be valid.

What should I do to protect myself?
If you received an email message from IT Services concerning the expiry of your password, please take a moment to change your password before it expires. NetID passwords are changed at https://netid.queensu.ca/selfservice/login/auth

We also encourage you to take the following actions to better protect yourself and your information:
Do not reuse passwords across your accounts.
If you have used your Queen’s password on multiple sites, we strongly encourage you to change that password on every other site where it has been used.
Be extra diligent of scams that may reference your Queen's account.

What data was compromised?
According to reports, the breach involves data from several 3rd party breaches. See below on how to review what services may be tied to your email address via the service called 'Have I been Pwned?"

Why is Queen’s expiring passwords for potentially breached accounts?
Queen’s account holders who fail to follow safe password practices are at risk when breaches like this occur. To protect your Queen’s account IT Services are taking this action to prevent account compromises by ensuring all accounts associated with the posting of credentials have refreshed passwords.

What caused the data breach?
It is believed that data like this is obtained from the scaping of data from breaches and from the mining of other 3rd party breached data which has been posted online in the past. Account information obtained through other online service breaches are reviewed by hackers and when simple passwords are found, they are tested against other services to see whether the password is still valid with slight variations. IT Services obtain breach information from the service called “Have I Been Pwned?” . Visiting the website https://haveibeenpwned.com/ will allow you to enter and check your Queen’s University email address against all publicized breaches that reference your Queen’s email address. The site also provides details about the data breach, including links to additional information.