Australia’s Privacy Commissioner has revealed a tech support scam was the cause of the massive 2025 data breach at Australian airline Qantas and found the carrier didn’t breach its privacy obligations despite leaking personally identifiable information for 5.7 million customers.
The Commissioner reached that conclusion, and a decision not to open a formal privacy probe, in a report published today.
Qantas has previously admitted the incident was the result of a social engineering attack on a contact center. The Commissioner’s report goes deeper, explaining a crook who claimed to represent “Qantas IT help” made the call and told a contact center agent to access a CRM system and perform certain actions needed to close a support ticket.
Read more…
Source: The Register
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- German authorities seize ‘BlueLeaks’ server that hosted data on US cops
July 7, 2020
German authorities have seized today a web server that hosted BlueLeaks, a website that provided access to internal documents stolen from US police departments. The server belonged to DDoSecrets (Distributed Denial of Secrets), an activist group that published the files last month, in mid-June. The server seizure was announced today by investigative journalist Emma Best, one of ...
- Exposed Frost & Sullivan databases for sale on hacking forum
June 24, 2020
U.S. business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan was breached after data from an unsecured backup folder exposed on the Internet was sold on a hacker forum. Frost & Sullivan is a business consulting firm that assists companies in growth strategy, market research, on corporate training. With 40 locations throughout the world and over 1,800 employees, Frost ...
- BlueLeaks: Data from 200 US police departments & fusion centers published online
June 22, 2020
The files, dubbed BlueLeaks, have been published by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a group that describes itself as a “transparency collective.” The data has been made available online on a searchable portal. According to the BlueLeaks portal, the leaked data contains more than one million files, such as scanned documents, videos, emails, audio files, and more. DDoSecrets ...
- IT giant Cognizant confirms data breach after ransomware attack
June 17, 2020
In a series of data breach notifications, IT services giant Cognizant has stated that unencrypted data was most likely accessed and stolen during an April Maze Ransomware attack. Cognizant is one of the largest IT managed services company in the world with close to 300,000 employees and over $15 billion in revenue. As a managed service provider (MSP), Cognizant ...
- Honda investigates possible ransomware attack, networks impacted
June 8, 2020
Computer networks in Europe and Japan from car manufacturer giant Honda have been affected by issues that are reportedly related to a SNAKE Ransomware cyber-attack. Details are unclear at the moment but the company is currently investigating the cause of the problems that were detected on Monday. The company has confirmed to BleepingComputer that its IT network is not functioning ...
- U.S. Nuclear Contractor Hit with Maze Ransomware, Data Leaked
June 4, 2020
A U.S. military contractor involved in the maintenance of the country’s Minuteman III nuclear arsenal has been hit by the Maze ransomware, according to reports – with the hackers making off with reams of sensitive information. The company, Westech International, has a range of contracts with the military for everything from ongoing evaluation for the ballistic ...