Incident Reported: June 27 2020

‘Unforgivable’: The privacy breach that exposed sensitive details of WA’s virus fight

WA Health traces data leak to Vodafone pager service. The breach also impacted St John Ambulance, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Department of Justice.

Source: G’Unforgivable’: The privacy breach that exposed sensitive details of WA’s virus fight | WAtoday
More reports from: WAtoday.

Sensitive medical details of scores of West Australians have been compromised in one of the state’s biggest privacy breaches, where thousands of state government communications were published on a public website.

The most sensitive information to be hacked and posted to the public forum related to the management of the COVID-19 crisis in WA, a Nine News Perth investigation revealed on Monday.

More than 400 webpages – many containing communications and messages between health officials and doctors – were posted to the website.

They include details of people in quarantine, including phone numbers and addresses, and how their cases are being managed.

“person under the age of 16” is the owner of the website that published the contents of pager communications among WA Health staff and other authorities, it has been revealed.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan said police had visited the individual and managed to have the site shut down.

The site contained “sensitive” and “confidential” information about suspected COVID-19 and child protection cases, among others.

The pager network was operated by Vodafone, according to WA Today.