Hacker holds Australian health insurer's data for ransom

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A cybercriminal was holding for ransom an Australian health insurer’s customer data including diagnoses and treatments, in the nation’s second major privacy breach in a month, officials said on Thursday.

Trade in Medibank shares has been halted on the Australian Securities Exchange since Wednesday when police were alerted that the company had been contacted by what it described as a “criminal” who wanted to negotiate over the stolen personal data of customers.

Medibank, which has 3.7 million customers, said on Thursday the criminal had provided a sample of 100 customer policies from a purported haul of 200 gigabytes of stolen data.

Details included customer names, addresses, birth dates, national health care identification numbers and phone numbers.

Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil said most concerning was that records of medical diagnoses and procedures had also been stolen.

“Financial crime is a terrible thing. But ultimately, a credit card can be replaced,” O’Neil told reporters.

“The threat that is being made here to make the private, personal health information of Australians made available to the public is a dog act,” she added.

The thief had threatened to sell Medibank data to third parties and singled out records of 1,000 politicians, media personalities, actors, LGBTQ activists and drug addicts for exposure, Nine Network News reported.

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