The hackers behind the recent Medibank hack have been labelled “scumbags” as it is revealed that the breach included abortion data being obtained and uploaded to the dark web.
The Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil shared the devastating update on Thursday, pledging to track down the hackers and bring them to justice.
“I want the scumbags behind this attack to know that the smartest and toughest people in this country are coming up you,” she told parliament during question time.
Per The Guardian, the data was uploaded to a dark web blog in a file labelled “abortions”. In it, the hacker claims they demanded USD $10 million from Medibank to prevent it from being posted.
The files reportedly contain information about pregnancy terminations including non-viable pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages.
“I want to say, particularly to the women whose private health information has been compromised overnight, as the Minister for Cybersecurity but more importantly, as a woman, this should not have happened, and I know this is a really difficult time,” O’Neil continued.
She added that she had spoken to Medibank’s CEO, David Koczkar, and had made him “abundantly clear” of what the customers are owed given what has transpired.
“The expectation of Australians is that support will be there when they need it,” O’Neil said.
“That is why we requested that Medibank operate a one-stop-shop model, to assist citizens in accessing the support that has been made available across Medibank, the civil sector and state and federal governments. This is complemented by additional government services, and law enforcement action.”
The Australian Federal Police has warned Australians not to seek out the data themselves as the act is in breach of our privacy laws.
AFP’s Assistant Commissioner Cyber Command, Justine Gough explained that anyone who does actively seek this information “could be committing crimes themselves”.
The abhorrent attack and exposure of data follows the Optus’ significant data breach last month, which saw almost 10 million customers impacted, and more than 2 million “severely impacted” with their personal data exposed on the dark web.
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