Australian Medical Privacy Breach: September 19 2020

Anglicare Sydney being held to ransom over sensitive data stolen from computer system

17GB data transmitted to ‘remote location’ after attack.

Company Statement: Statement from Anglicare Sydney – 02 September 2020
Source: Incident: Anglicare Sydney being held to ransom over sensitive data stolen from computer system | ABC News (Australia)
More reports from: ABC News (Australia).

Anglicare Sydney has confirmed that it is being held to ransom over a large amount of potentially sensitive information that has been stolen from its computer system.

It revealed that 17 gigabytes of data was transmitted to a remote location on August 31 in what it called “a malicious cyber attack”.

Anglicare Sydney said in statement: “The main system relating to Anglicare Sydney’s Out of Home Care program, which includes the foster care program, was not impacted.”

But it was unable to say what information is contained in the seized data.

Anglicare Sydney has refused to pay a ransom. “Anglicare Sydney had an incident response plan in place for this type of scenario whereby we could remediate with off-site backup systems and would not entertain engaging with cyber criminals,” it said in a statement on Saturday.

The not-for-profit said it has strengthened its cybersecurity following the incident

Data exfiltration has become a feature of ransomware attacks recently with hackers seeking to use stolen data as extra leverage to bargain for ransom. [SK – Just gets better 🙁 even if you have excellent recovery, they will still release the data if you don’t pay]

Anglicare Sydney Laptops Stolen: 30 Dec, 2019
“..incident involving an unauthorised entry into Anglicare Sydney – Telopea office on 10 November 2019 resulting in 4 staff laptops being stolen by unknown parties.”