Medibank hack: If the medical information of high-profile Australians – including actors, politicians and activists – is made public by hackers, it could have devastating consequences.
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If a ransom is not paid, hackers say they will release the personal medical data of high-profile Australians they obtained from an Australian health insurance company, according to a new report by the Sydney Morning Herald.
Unknown hackers have said they have breached Medibank, a private health insurer in Australia. They are estimated to have accessed about 3.9 million customer data, which includes credit card numbers .
See also: Ransom Cartel linked to REvil ransomware
The hackers sent a threatening message to Medibank in broken English, clearly believing that threats against well-known Australians were the best way to secure ransom. The message to Medibank, which owns the AHM health insurance brand, included threats to release private medical information about politicians, actors, bloggers and LGBT activists:
If you refuse to negotiate with us, we will take action by doing things like: 1. Selling your database information to third parties or 2. But before that, we will target 1k people from your database who have the most followers (politicians, actors, bloggers, etc.) and email them their personal information unless you choose to negotiate with us soon.
Medibank, an Australian company, has not disclosed how much money hackers who obtained the private information of millions of customers. The term “more followers” in this context likely refers to the number of people following high-profile Australians on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
See also: Verizon: Notifies customers of account breach
On October 13, Medibank strangely reported a “cyber incident” – however, it said no sensitive customer data had been compromised. It later confirmed that it was indeed a ransomware attack.
Just last month, Australia's second-largest telco, Optus, suffered a data breach when it was discovered that it was storing sensitive customer information, such as driver's licenses, in a publicly visible API. This is particularly problematic because Australia is considered a wealthy country and should theoretically have better security measures in place to protect private data.
Information source: gizmodo.com
