Australian health records leaked on dark web

Stolen data likely to include info on some of country’s most influential and wealthy individuals

CANBERRA: Hackers have followed through on a threat to leak sensitive medical records stolen from a major Australian health company that counts the country’s prime minister among nearly 10 million customers.

Medibank told investors that a “sample” selection of customer data was posted on a “dark web forum” yesterday after it refused to pay a ransom demand.

The data included names, birth dates, passport numbers and information on medical claims for hundreds of customers who were separated into “naughty” and “nice” lists.

Some on the “naughty” list had numeric codes that appeared to link them to drug addiction, alcohol abuse and HIV infection.

For example, one record carried an entry that read: “p_diag: F122”.

F122 corresponds with “cannabis dependence” under the International Classification of Diseases, published by the World Health Organisation.

Medibank is Australia’s largest private health insurer and the hack is likely to include some of the country’s most influential and wealthy individuals.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he himself was a Medibank customer and that the attack was a “wake-up call” for corporate Australia.

The perpetrator of the hack has not yet been publicly identified.

Justine Gough of the Australian Federal Police said it was the work of a “criminal or criminal groups” that could be operating outside the country.

Sanjay Jha, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales Institute for Cyber Security, said it was difficult to attribute any attack to a single group.

However, he told AFP it carried some of the hallmarks associated with a Russian hacker group called REvil – which has previously targeted everything from Brazilian meat company JBS to Lady Gaga.

“The pattern matches the behaviour in parts. So that is why there is a serious indication it could be them selling the data.”

A defunct REvil website has been redirecting traffic to the dark web forum where the Medibank data was leaked. – AFP