Optus, an Australian telecommunications company owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., said an elaborate hack had stolen personal information from up to 10 million customers, but no corporate customers were affected. It also stated that it will contact the affected customers.
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin expressed outrage and regret that an offshore entity had infiltrated the company’s database of customer data, accessing private addresses, driving licenses and passport numbers in one of the country’s biggest cybersecurity breaches.
“We will be identifying specifically which customers (were affected) and proactively contacting each customer with clear explanations of which of their information has been exposed and taken. I’m angry that there are people out there that want to do this to our customers. I’m disappointed that we couldn’t have prevented it … and I’m very sorry,” Bayer Rosmarin said in an online media briefing on Friday.
She declined to elaborate on how the attacker disrupted the company’s security, pointing to an ongoing criminal investigation, but noted that the attacker’s IP address, the unique identifier of a computer, appeared to be moving between undisclosed European countries.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.