Telstra, a giant telecommunication company in Australia, has announced that some details of its employees have been made public online. The information was from the 2017 record.
The group executive Alex Badenoch revealed on Saturday, Oct. 1, that the data leak came from a third-party company that administered a rewards program for Telstra employees in 2017.
Who Were Affected by the Data Breach?
According to the telco firm, up to 30,000 current and past employees' names and email addresses were exposed in the hack, which took place on a dark web forum. Therefore, no private information was shared online.
A Telstra official issued a statement believing that the breach is an attempt to gain profit out of the recent Optus leak incident.
"We've been made aware of a data breach affecting a third party that included limited Telstra employee information from 2017. To be clear, it was not a breach of any Telstra systems," the telco's spokesman confirmed.
Relevant authorities have already been notified to conduct an investigation. Both current and former employees of Telstra were informed, too.
On the other hand, the involved third-party company is in touch with Telstra to find out the cause of the breach.
The network provider encouraged its staff members to contact its cyber team for additional details regarding the breach or to find out if their names and email addresses were compromised.
Telstra asked its people to be on the lookout for any unexpected communications in the interim. Be careful of the possible scam calls, and as much as possible, change and strengthen their password on all their online accounts.
While a large number of the firm's employees were affected, the spokesperson confirmed that no customer account information was leaked.
What is Data-Scraping?
Based on the report by News.au.com, it was determined that the hackers are employing a method called data-scraping. This technique extracts outdated data from any system with the intention of passing it off as current data.
What Happened to Optus' Cyber Attack?
A week ago, another telco company, Optus, was hit by a massive data breach.
The firm launched an external examination in response to the major attack. It confirmed that the suspects were able to steal the personal identifying numbers of its approximately 10 million consumers. However, no financial data was compromised.
Following an inquiry, Optus stated that it believes 7.7 million of the 9.8 million clients whose data was compromised do not require new papers for replacement.
Among the millions of leaked personal identification details are 50,000 Medicare numbers and 150,000 passport numbers.
Optus is currently providing a free subscription to those customers most negatively impacted by the incident as compensation for the losses. Free credit monitoring will be required for any suspected identity theft that may occur.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Trisha Kae Andrada
