Tech

Hackers threaten to leak stolen health data of 1,000 Australian celebrities weeks after Optus attack


Hackers have threatened to leak the stolen health data of 1,000 prominent Australians in a cybersecurity incident described by the government on Thursday as a “major wake-up call”.

Medibank, one of Australia’s largest private health insurers, said on Thursday that hackers claimed to have stolen 200GB of data.

“The criminal provided a sample of 100 policies,” it said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

“This claim data includes the location where the client receives medical services and codes related to their diagnosis and procedures.”

The insurance company announced the suspension of trading when details of the hack emerged Wednesday morning.

The hackers threatened to leak or sell the data, starting with 1,000 famous Australians, unless Medibank paid the ransom.

The personal information of around nine million Australians – almost a third of the population – was exposed last month in an attack targeting telecoms company Optus.

The Optus hack was one of the largest data breaches in Australian history.

Interior Minister Clare O’Neil said on Thursday that cybersecurity is no longer taken for granted.

“Combined with Optus, this is a huge wake-up call for the country,” she told ABC Radio.

“This is the new world we live in. We’re going to be under constant cyber attacks, basically from here on out.”

Last week, Reuters report that two Australian regulators have opened investigations into Optus, the country’s No. 2 telecommunications service provider, after a breach of its systems resulted in the theft of personal data from up to 10 million accounts. The polls only added headaches to Optus, which disclosed the breach on September 22 and has since been heavily criticized by the government and the public for failing to prevent the massive cyberattack.


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