Security News > 2022 > September > Australia asks FBI to help find attacker who stole data from millions of users

Australian authorities have asked the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist with investigations into the data breach at local telco Optus.

Attorney general Mark Dreyfus yesterday revealed the FBI was asked to help identify the entities involved in the attack, which saw Optus leak data describing over ten million account holders.

Ministers quickly noted that Optus had not previously disclosed the leak of Medicare data.

"Too many eyes. We will not sale data to anyone. We cant if we even want to: personally deleted data from drive" the entity wrote, adding "Optus if your reading we would have reported exploit if you had method to contact. No security mail, no bug bountys, no way too message."

That's vastly more than any previous data breach in Australia, and Optus is comfortably the most prominent brand to have suffered such an incident.

In coming days it's expected laws will impose consumer protection requirements on companies that hold personal data, plus sterner fines for entities that leak data.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/optus_data_breach_summary/