Peter A Clarke

The ABC in Australian Clinical Labs accused of ‘sitting on’ hack that saw patient data posted to the dark web reports on Australian Clinical Labs having bneen hit by a data breach in February but only advised patients five months later.  This is not an isolated event.  Bleeping Computer reports in See Tickets discloses 2.5 years-long credit card theft breach that hackers had accessed customers payment card details via a skimmer on its website.  The breach was detected in April 2021 but the malicious code was only fully removed on 8 January 2022.  After further analysis that See Tickets finally concluded on 12 September 2022 that the hackers made accessed customer credit information including full names, .  An internal investigation determined that the initial breach occured on 25 June 2019.  In total an exposure of 2.5 years. It is not uncommon with sophisticated attacks that it can take considerable time to detect an intruder, particularly if a company does not have software designed to monitor unusual activities within a site.  But 2.5 years indicates a woeful level of cyber security.

The latest significant data breach has been a ransomware attack on the Department of Defence, specifically a communications platform used by the military.  Hackers accessed the ForceNet service which is operated by an external information provider.  It is reported in Australian Defence Department caught up in ransomware attack.  Given the function of the platform communications between the current and former Australian defence members have been compromised.  The dataset extends back to 2018.  It will be interesting to determine whether data was retained long after it should have been deleted.  That is a constant problem in Australian data management. I am not surprised the hackers targeted an ICT contractor.  Third party providers are often the weak link for organisations.  They are commonly Read the rest of this entry »