The AICPA said on Thursday that it was not the victim of a cyberattack, days after an article surfaced online stating that threat actors had bragged on an online forum that they compromised an AICPA database with more than 140,000 emails and corresponding passwords.
The website Cybernews wrote on Tuesday that cyberthieves had attached samples of the data on the online forum as proof of legitimacy.
But in a statement sent to CPA Practice Advisor this morning, the AICPA said, “We became aware of the Cybernews article earlier this week. Our IT incident response team began immediate assessment and testing of the allegedly compromised trove of emails and passwords, enlisting third-party cybersecurity firms as part of that process. We’ve concluded the hacked emails are not connected to AICPA and CIMA. They appear to be from previously disclosed breaches of other, unrelated organizations.
“Unfortunately, hacking scams are increasingly common for organizations large and small. We spend a lot of time investing in our own cybersecurity to keep our members’ data safe and to provide the accounting profession with best practices and resources to support it in this area.”
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Alex April 5 2026 at 8:06 pm
It’s good to know the AICPA verified this immediately with third-party firms. It reminds me of how easily credentials from old hacks resurface on these forums. This just reinforces why we need to be so strict about using different passwords for every major account and enabling multi-factor authentication whenever possible.