Australia has been the target of yet another data breach, with the largest health insurer this time. The medical information of clients has been taken as part of a significant data breach, according to Medibank Private Ltd, which provides insurance to one-sixth of Australians.
The business said that an unknown individual called them and displayed stolen personal data on 100 clients, including medical diagnoses and treatments. The corporation originally revealed the theft a week prior, and it involved about 200 terabytes of data. Although the corporation issued a warning that the number was expected to increase, it is unknown how many of its four million clients had been impacted. The Australian Federal Police has opened an inquiry.
The largest companies in Australia have been hit by a wave of cyberattacks in recent weeks. A month ago, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.-owned telco Optus disclosed that up to 10 million customers’ data may have been taken. Although the main concern up until now has been hackers utilising stolen data to access bank accounts, the situation has taken a new turn. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, a person messaging the publication under the guise of the Medibank hacker promised to reveal medical details of prominent people unless the person was paid.
According to Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neill, ‘What we have here is… healthcare information and that simply on its own being made public can cause great harm to Australians and that’s why we are so involved with this.’ Security experts are unsure of whether the two intrusions are connected. However, they do believe that the Optus attack’s prominence may have caught the attention of cyber networks.
‘Hackers take notice of well publicised breaches like the one at Optus in Australia and decide to check it out to see what they can get away with,’ said Jeremy Kirk, executive editor of the cybersecurity newspaper Information Security Media Group. Telstra Corp. Ltd., an Optus rival, also reported a minor employee data leak. 2.2 million customers of a discount website utilised by Woolworths Group Ltd, a leading supermarket retailer, said that some individuals had obtained access to its customer database.
Former FBI cyberterrorism investigator Dan Woods, who is now the chief of intelligence at cybersecurity company F5, told Reuters that Australia has ‘undoubtedly suffered its worst few weeks from a cybercrime viewpoint, but on the plus side it’s been a wake-up call the country may have needed’.
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