The federal government is considering issuing new Medicare cards for Australians who had their private details leaked. 9News
Health Minister Mark Butler told the ABC today the government was only alerted Medicare numbers were part of the massive leak when the apparent culprit, who later stopped his extortion bid, posted 10,000 new personal records online yesterday.
"We are very concerned about the loss of the data and are working hard to deal with the consequences, but we are particularly concerned we were not notified earlier and consumers were not notified earlier about the breach of Medicare data as well," he said.The government is still working to find out how many Medicare numbers were exposed but Butler said the issuing of new ones was being considered.Butler said the government was also considering fast-tracking passport replacements.
In a bizarre sequence of events yesterday, an anonymous online poster claimed to be responsible for the data breach that saw the information of almost 10 million Australians compromised. The poster said they had released the personal data of the first 10,200 people, and would continue doing so until their ransom demand was met.same poster apologised online and said no data would be soldThey also claimed to have destroyed the only copies of the stolen personal information, which included drivers licence, passport, and Medicare numbers."I don't believe it. I don't trust criminals," he told Today.
The identity of the hacker or hackers has not been confirmed, but MacGibbon said the consensus inside the cyber-security community was that it was not a "sophisticated" attack that led to the Optus breach."The size of this data breach, up to 10 million Australians affected, is unprecedented here in this country," he said.Optus customers are advised to take a number of steps to protect their identity online."It isn't just about privacy laws.
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