SINGAPORE, June 5 — The Singapore government said its online identifications issued to residents to access information including personal income tax details and pension savings may have been tampered with.

The investigations showed 1,560 so-called SingPass accounts may have been breached with their passwords accessed without the users’ permission, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. A total of 419 of the accounts triggered password reset notification letters to be sent to the account holders, it said.

The authority was notified by the SingPass operator three days ago, and a police report was filed on June 3, it said. The security breach may affect Singapore’s reputation as an Asian financial centre. The city is Asia’s largest wealth management centre with about US$800 billion (RM2.6 trillion) in offshore assets, according to Boston Consulting Group.

“The Singapore government takes cyber security very seriously,” the authority said. “The protection of personal data and the delivery of secure e-services are critical. We will continue to strengthen all government e-services as part of on- going efforts to enhance security.”

Checks by the infocomm authority showed no evidence that the SingPass system was compromised, it said.

The infringement comes about six months after Standard Chartered Plc said wealthy clients’ confidential information was stolen in Singapore from a printing company. The London-based lender said in December it hadn’t found any unauthorized transactions since the theft from Fuji Xerox Co, which was hired to print statements for the 647 clients.

In November, Singapore authorities investigated a breach of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s website, one day after he said he would track down a group that announced plans to hack government online portals. — Bloomberg