(Sydney) Australian police announced on Friday that Russian hackers were behind a cyberattack on an Australian health insurance giant, which impacted 9.7 million customers and former customers, including the prime minister.
Posted at 12:20 a.m.
A “loosely affiliated group of cybercriminals” carried out the cyberattack from Russia where it is based, said Reece Kershaw, an Australian Federal Police official.
Medibank, one of the largest private health insurance companies in the country, admitted this week that hackers had been able to access the personal data of its policyholders.
After publishing a first “sample” of this data on Wednesday, the hackers published a second on Thursday on a forum in the dark web — which cannot be found using regular browsers.
They contained particularly personal information about hundreds of people.
The first leaked information appeared to have been selected to cause significant harm, targeting people being treated for drug addiction, sexually transmitted infections or pregnancy terminations.
The insurer has so far refused to pay the hackers.