Tag Archive for: deleted

UPDATE 2-Optus under further fire for cyber breach, purported hacker claims data deleted


(Recasts and writes through)

By Renju Jose and Byron Kaye

SYDNEY, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Australian telecoms giant Optus came under more fire from the government on Tuesday for a massive cyber breach, while an anonymous online account believed to be that of the hackers said it was deleting stolen data and withdrawing a $1 million ransom demand.

Singapore Telecoms-owned Optus, the country’s No. 2 mobile operator, said last week that data of up to 10 million customers including home addresses, drivers’ licenses and passport numbers had been compromised in one of Australia’s biggest data breaches.

An account called ‘optusdata’ in an online forum, believed by cybersecurity experts to be that of the hackers, had threatened to publish the data of 10,000 Optus customers per day unless they received $1 million in cryptocurrency.

On Tuesday, however, the account holders posted they had deleted the data due to “too many eyes”, were withdrawing their ransom demand and were sorry for having already leaked data of 10,200 Australians.

Optus and the Australian Federal Police, which have been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other offshore law enforcement agencies to probe the cyberattack, declined to comment on whether they believed the ‘optusdata’ account holders were behind the breach.

The Australian federal government has blamed Optus for the breach, flagged an overhaul of privacy rules and higher fines, and suggested the company had “effectively left the window open” for hackers to steal data.

Minister For Cyber Security Clare O’Neil said she was “incredibly concerned … about reports that personal information from the Optus data breach, including Medicare numbers, are now being offered for free and for ransom”, referring to the government’s health insurance scheme.

Optus Chief Executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the incident had generated “a lot of misinformation” and the company took data protection seriously.

“Given we’re not allowed to say much because the police have asked us not to, what I can say … is that our data was encrypted and we had multiple players of protection,” Bayer Rosmarin told ABC Radio.

She added that most customers understand that “we are not…

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IHG hack: 'Vindictive' couple deleted hotel chain data for fun – BBC



IHG hack: ‘Vindictive’ couple deleted hotel chain data for fun  BBC

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Arizona audit: Maricopa County denies claims staff deleted data


Ben Cotton, founder of the firm CyFIR, alleged there is evidence of general election results getting purged in February before the Senate GOP’s audit started.

PHOENIX — The founder of a digital forensics firm accused Maricopa County of intentionally deleting data during a presentation Friday on the results of a partisan, GOP-led audit into the county’s 2.1 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election.

Ben Cotton is the founder of the firm CyFIR. He alleged there is evidence of general election results getting purged in February before the Senate GOP’s audit started. 

The county, however, repudiated those claims in a tweet: 

Cotton, a member of Senate President Karen Fann’s audit team, is best known for having driven copies of the county’s voting system data to a lab at his home in Montana.

Fann authorized the unprecedented election review without a vote of the full Senate after unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona’s largest county – the first in more than 70 years by a Democrat – delivered the state to the now president.

The vote was certified in late November by Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey. Nothing that is presented Friday will change the outcome of the vote, although there is a movement among Trump…

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Woman who deliberately deleted firm’s Dropbox is sentenced

58-year-old Danielle Bulley may not look like your typical cybercriminal, but the act of revenge she committed against a company had just as much impact as a conventional hacker breaking into a business’s servers and causing havoc.

Read more in my article on the Hot for Security blog.

Graham Cluley