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:
- Japanese electricity giant apologises after physical drive with data of 10.9 million clients goes missing
June 12, 2026
A Japanese energy giant has apologised after losing a physical storage drive containing the data on millions of its clients. Workers for Kyushu Electric Power Co. apparently mislaid the drive, which had been left in an unlocked cabinet, the company explained in an official announcement. The drive allegedly contained information on up to 10.9 million accounts, including customer ...
- Novo Nordisk reports cyberattack as UK gives Wegovy pill the nod
June 12, 2026
Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk says data related to clinical trial participants was stolen as part of a cyberattack. The affected patient data was pseudonymized and not directly linked to names or other direct identifiers, the company said. The maker of the Wegovy weight-loss drug said the affected data types include patient ID, information on trial participation, gender, ...
- Data of 2.4 million VRChat users stolen
June 11, 2026
VRChat, Inc. has filed a data breach notice revealing that the information of more than 2.4 million users was involved in a data breach. According to the notice, VRChat experienced unauthorized access to some account data between May 10 and May 12, 2026. The access happened in VRChat’s cloud environment and involved user profile and login-related data. Read more… Source: ...
- Qilin NHS breach tally grows as Essex trust confirms stolen records
June 9, 2026
The patient tally from the Synnovis ransomware attack continues to grow two years later, with Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust confirming it was caught up in the breach. The trust told The Register that the Synnovis breach affected about 2,380 records relating to patients who underwent specialist diagnostic testing. The disclosure follows a similar announcement by Bedfordshire ...
- Password manager Dashlane says hackers stole some customers’ password vaults
June 2, 2026
Password manager maker Dashlane says hackers have obtained at least a dozen encrypted vaults used for storing customer passwords during a weekend cyberattack. The company said on its website that hackers brute-forced the company’s two-factor authentication system, granting the hackers access to about 20 customer accounts. By defeating its two-factor mechanism, the hackers were able to download a copy of ...
- Fake ChatGPT download site infects Windows and Mac users with malware
May 28, 2026
A convincing fake website is impersonating OpenAI’s ChatGPT download page and infecting visitors with malware designed to steal passwords, browser data, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive information. The site, openewapp, closely mimics OpenAI’s real ChatGPT download experience and offers what appear to be official desktop apps for both Windows and macOS. Instead, Windows users receive a ...