Ransomwared payroll provider leaks data on 38,000 Australian government workers

Personal information describing names, addresses, bank account details, and taxation IDs of 38,000 Australian government employees has been leaked to the dark web after a ransomware attack. The treasurer of the Australian State of South Australia, Rob Lucas, today revealed the source of the leak: outsourced payroll provider …

[Anonymous Coward]

Outsource they said, cheaper they said, more secure they said

No

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Outsource they said, cheaper they said, more secure they said

I have the utmost confidence that the Australian Government could have screwed up just as well.

[Version 1.0]

Re: Outsource they said, cheaper they said, more secure they said

Pascal, the explanation is here.

It's worth watching the whole video to get to know Australia.

[Pascal Monett]

No evidence, eh ?

Methinks your "investigation" demonstrates why you got hacked in the first place : you don't have a clue.

That probably explains why the exfiltrated data was not encrypted - you don't have the expertise to manage that.

In other words, another payroll provider with a bit more savvy in the backend might be a good choice.

[John Brown (no body)]

A small number

"somewhere between 38,000 and 80,000."

Sometimes, I feel that some of these PR hacks need to be arrested and charged with fraud.

[W.S.Gosset]

*muses, apropos of nothing*

> Lucass's

...made me wonder if, back when he was in primary school, the kids ever changed young Lucas's first vowel to an "i".

[W.S.Gosset]

Apart from that

Given Australian banks' high-speed low-security approach and attitude, combined with their trenchant refusal to correct errors, those leaked fields (esp.if they also included phone number, which is likely in Australia) are more than enough to completely clean them all out financially.

One of our previous federal heads of cybersecurity got hit with a simple SIM swap, got cleaned out, and even with her political & bureaucratic clout she got absolutely nowhere with the banks. I think she got a little bit back after a few years of fighting. So these ordinary little guys have got Buckley's

[yetanotheraoc]

Credible

"One small upside is that, while Frontier Software operates outside Australia, it appears only Australian data was accessed."

So says ... Frontier Software?

[batfink]

The usual bollocks

How many times have we heard "There's no evidence that sensitive data was stolen or disseminated"? They're the standard weasel words from hacked companies.