The hackers claim to have personal information on millions of Australians, although the authenticity of their assertion has not been established.
They confirmed that at least some of the information published was accurate, although in one case a person on the list did not think they had previously been an Optus customer.
Jeremy Kirk, executive editor at Information Security Media Group, a computer security-focused publisher, said he had attempted to check the veracity of one item of data after he saw an address in the sample file that was close to his home in NSW. He said he spoke to a woman at the residence, who requested to remain anonymous, but confirmed she had been an Optus customer until 2018, which is within the breach timeframe that dates back to 2017.Kirk offered to put the woman in touch with Optus to see whether there was special assistance the company could give her, given the exposure of her information.
Several emails in the sample do not appear in Have I Been Pwned?, a site run by Australian cybersecurity consultant Troy Hunt that allows users to check if they have been caught up in a data breach. That suggests the data in the sample could have been newly obtained from Optus, could be fake, or merely from another hack not catalogued by the site.The alleged ransom post claims the data is in two files, with similar information.
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