A report has stated that a Russian-based cyber-criminal attacked and hacked Medibank Private ltd. Australia’s current and former customer data was jeopardized. Can you imagine 97 lakhs of people having their Medibank accounts hacked? It’s bizarre.”Based on the extensive advice we have received from cybercrime experts we believe there is only a limited chance paying a ransom would ensure the return of our customers’ data and prevent it from being published,” Medibank CEO David Koczkar said as reported by Reuters.
“We’ll be holding talks with Russian law enforcement agencies about these individuals,” AFP reported. The group’s name hasn’t been publicly announced but the authorities believe that the culprits are Russian based, known as “REvil” or “Ransomware Evil”. They have protection ushered by President Vladimir Putin.
The Medibank stated that the data stolen is from 9.7 million past and present clients of which 1.8 million are international customers. The hackers later uploaded the data of these patients by giving the cause funny treatment names which showed more disrespect and were offensive. Of Course, if a group has hacked to such an extent of data it means they must have hacked other business affiliates and associations across the world.
The history of REvil is slightly inclined towards US-based firms as well, previously they hacked the major international meat supplier JBS Foods and now the list goes on. However, the investigation is still in process and the Medibank refused to pay any sort of payment to the criminal responsible for the data theft.
