October 26, 2022
Australia appears to be the safest haven for cyber attackers, with health insurance giant Medibank reporting a data breach in which a hacker stole 200 GB of medical records after gaining unauthorised access to its internal systems and holding them to ransom.
Medibank and Australian Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil had previously falsely called the attack a ransomware attack, but it appears to have been a simple data exfiltration operation. The ransom amount is unknown, but Medibank said in a statement that the hackers, who had previously contacted them to extort customer data, had given them a sample of 100 customer data.
The hacker claims to have at least 200 GB of stolen data, including payment information, personal contact information, full names, home addresses, dates of birth and telephone numbers. It also includes the names and contact information of about 1,000 vulnerable people, from politicians and celebrities to LGBTQ activists and people suffering from drug addiction.
The inclusion of national health identification numbers in the list of accessed data appears to be a matter of concern to Australians, as this attack comes just weeks after the breach against Optus. Losing national identification numbers as a result of this attack is causing backlog for government agencies because many people want to change their numbers.
With the exception of a brief trading halt, the attack had no impact on the company’s day-to-day operations, but it is unclear how many customer contacts or medical records were compromised.
The sources for this piece include an article in CPOMagazine.
