Australian Health Laboratory Hacked, Data 223,000 Patients And Hacked Staff

Illustration. (Unsplash/Towfiqu barbhuiya)

JAKARTA - Australian Clinical Labs said on Thursday its Medlab Pathology laboratory business had data breaches affecting about 223,000 accounts, marking major hacking of all four Australian companies since September.

ACL said the hacked data included more than 17,500 individual medical and health records, more than 28,000 credit card numbers and customer names, as well as more than 128,600 Medicare numbers.

There is no evidence of misuse of any information or any requests made regarding Medlab or ACL to date, the company said, adding the compromised Medlab server had been disabled and the wider ACL system was not affected.

Medlab learned of unauthorized third-party access to its information technology system in February. A month later, the Australian Cyber Security Center (ACSC) called it a possible ransomware attack.

"Given the highly complex and unstructured nature of the datasets being investigated, forensic analysts and experts are needed up to now to determine the individuals and the nature of their information involved," ACL said.

ACSC also notified the company in June that Medlab's information had been posted on the dark web, which was then searched for and removed by ACL permanently.

"We sincerely apologize and deeply regret this incident happened. We want to convince all individuals involved, ACL is committed to providing any reasonable support to them," explained ACL Melinda McGrath's Chief Executive Officer.

It is known, apart from ACL, hacking of Australian companies was also experienced by Medibank, telecommunications company Optus, and online retailer My Deal.