Optus

Part of the message sent by a ransomware gang researchers have dubbed BlogXX which may have links to REvil.Screenshot: BlogXXStolen health records for millions of Australians have been publicly released on the dark web following a threat by hackers 24 hours earlier to do precisely that. Last month, the unknown hackers demanded a ransom from Medibank, a private insurance provider in Australia, which the company refused to pay.The hackers, who claimed to have spent a month rummaging around Medibank’s systems, have posted…

Australia's biggest health insurer Medibank Private Ltd, recently hit by a massive cyber hack, said the hacker could release more stolen data after the company refused to make ransom payments. Some names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers of international students and health claims data stolen from Medibank's systems have already been released on a dark web forum, the company said in a statement. "We expect the criminal to continue to release files on the dark web," it added. Local media has…

A government regulatory agency has been embroiled in a hack on an IT services firm owned by Optus’ parent company, Singtel, as Singapore’s prime minister offered his country’s help in investigating the damaging cyberattack on the Australian telco.The national IT services firm Dialog, which Singtel bought this year, disclosed a data breach on October 10 that it said potentially affected about 1000 of its employees and fewer than 20 clients. But an internal client email obtained by this masthead suggests the data accessed…

Credit monitoring firm Equifax is scrambling to register new users after being inundated with Optus customers caught up in last month’s data breach and anxious Australians increasingly wary of identity theft.Optus in September said it would provide some of its current and former customers with one year of free monitoring from the consumer credit reporting agency after the data of nearly 10 million users was stolen. The subscription, subsidised by Optus, allows customers to detect if personal details are being used without…

The first is Confluence, made by the Australian technology giant Atlassian. It is a ubiquitous tool that companies use to store essential documentation on how their computer systems work.Jamieson O'Reilly, the founder of an Australian firm called Dvuln that companies pay to find IT vulnerabilities, said Confluence is his first port of call after getting into a client's systems.“We recently did a big engagement where we got into Confluence, and we spent about two weeks just studying the way the organisation worked through…

Potter said EnergyAustralia would be “getting the full scrutiny of the market” because of recent cases where other companies had mishandled communication about data breaches.On Thursday, Medibank Private admitted that hackers had stolen sensitive health information from 1 million customers, after initially stressing it had no evidence that sensitive information had been accessed.Earlier this month, Optus fell prey to one of the biggest data breaches in Australian history, involving 9.8 million customers, prompting fury…

“Given the sensitivity of data involved, it should have been taken more seriously from the start,” Paterson said in a text. “Once it was clear a compromised credential was involved there was no excuse.”Asked about the apparent double standard last week, O’Neil said she was “on the side of the Australian people” and focused on stopping more damage from the hackers’ crimes. Beneath the political cliche, there is truth to her line. For one, the government sees Medibank’s communications as better than Optus’. But more…

Hackers have threatened to leak the stolen health data of 1,000 famous Australians in a cybersecurity incident described by the government on Thursday as a "huge wake-up call".Medibank, one of Australia's largest private health insurers, said Thursday that the hackers were claiming to have stolen 200GB of data."The criminal has provided a sample of records for 100 policies," it said in a statement to the Australian stock market."This claims data includes the location of where a customer received medical services, and…

Medibank signage sits on top of the Medibank building on October 1, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.Photo: Scott Barbour (Getty Images)Hackers say they’ve obtained data from an Australian health insurance company and have threatened to release the private medical information of high-profile Australians if a ransom isn’t paid, according to a new report from the Sydney Morning Herald. The unknown hackers claim to have 200 gigabytes of data from Medibank, a private health insurer in Australia that has roughly 3.9 million…

Australian health insurer Medibank Private said it will isolate and remove access to some customer-facing systems as it detected unusual activity on its network. The company said it took "immediate steps to contain the incident, and engaged specialised cybersecurity firms", adding that there was no evidence that any sensitive data, including customer data, had been accessed at this stage. The incident follows a breach late last month at Optus, Australia's second-largest telecoms provider, which compromised data of up to…