According to the police, a Russian network is behind the hacker attack on a large health insurance company in Australia.
"We believe that those responsible for the crime are in Russia," said Reece Kershaw, a spokesman for the Australian National Police, in the capital Canberra. "Our findings point to a loosely affiliated group of cybercriminals who are also likely behind other massive security breaches in countries around the world."
Millions of Australians are likely to be affected by the hack, Kershaw said. "This cyberattack is an unacceptable attack on Australia and deserves a response commensurate with the malicious and far-reaching consequences this crime is causing."
A few weeks ago, the hackers penetrated the Medibank insurance company's database and stole highly sensitive information about millions of customers. They tried to blackmail the company. However, in consultation with cyber crime experts, the latter refused to pay the ransom. A few days ago, the perpetrators then published the first sensitive data from customers on the Darknet - i.e. in the hidden part of the Internet.
Almost $10 million ransom demanded
Among other things, the medical findings and treatments of the insured had fallen into the hands of the hackers, as well as their dates of birth, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. In the meantime, according to the AAP news agency, further data has been disclosed, apparently from alcoholic people and women who had abortions.
"We warned you that we always keep our word when we don't receive a ransom — we're releasing this data because otherwise no one will believe us in the future," the group wrote. She announced on Thursday that she had demanded a ransom of one US dollar for each of the 9.7 million affected Medibank customers - a total of 9.7 million dollars (9.5 million euros).
Medibank had announced that the company would not pay a ransom because this in no way ensured that the data would not be published anyway. In addition, they did not want to encourage other criminals to commit similar acts, said Medibank boss David Koczkar. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: "I am disgusted with the criminals behind this criminal act."
