FBI probing Optus hack
All the government’s resources are being thrown at helping to protect Australians who had their details stolen in the Optus data breach, says Health Minister Mark Butler.
The government is being urged by the opposition coalition to waive the fees for new passports that need to be issued following the attack on the Australian telco. Assistant Treasurer
Stephen Jones said passports had multiple layers of security and were still safe to use.
Meanwhile, the FBI is joining the Australian Federal Police in probing the alarming incident.
Attorney-general Mark Dreyfus revealed the international co-operation yesterday as the group behind the breach scrapped its ransom demand and claimed to have deleted the almost 10 million customers’ records it had hacked from Optus’ website.
The attempt to force Optus to pay US$1 million (NZ$1.78M) by Friday was dropped several hours after the group released a batch of 10,000 Australian customers’ sensitive details on a data breach forum on the clear web.
The illegally obtained information includes passport, Medicare and driver’s licence numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, and information about whether a person is renting or living with parents. Several state governments have struck agreements with Optus to protect customers whose driver’s licences were compromised.
The hackers said they would have alerted Optus to its vulnerability if the telco had a secure contact method or a ‘‘bug bounty’’.
Optus says it has sent email or SMS messages to customers whose details were compromised, and has apologised for the concern the hack has caused. It insists that payment details and account passwords were not compromised.
Australia’s privacy commissioner has urged Optus customers to be vigilant and not click on any links in text messages.