Australia is investigating an online security lapse after personal records of almost 50,000 workers at several government agencies and companies were left unsecured by a third-party contractor in one of the country’s worst data breaches, according to a report by iTnews yesterday.
Backup databases of employee records, including names, passwords, salaries and some credit card numbers were accessible after the misconfiguration of an Amazon.com Inc cloud storage product, it said.
“Companies should assume they will be breached and take steps to limit the impact of these incidents,” said Bryce Boland, chief technology officer for the Asia-Pacific region at FireEye Inc.
“The reality is many firms are unknowingly compromised,” Roland said.
As the scale and frequency of major hacking attacks increases, companies and governments have come under intense pressure to shore up their cybersecurity.
Only about 2 percent of corporate data is encrypted today, International Business Machines Corp said in July.
North Korean hackers are particularly active amid rising tensions over the country’s nuclear ambitions. They have been linked to last year’s heist from Bangladesh Bank, the country’s central bank, as well as cryptocurrency exchange attacks and the WannaCry ransomware that infected about 300,000 computers in 150 countries.
Australia has experienced several high profile hacks or data breaches in the past few years.
The Australian government said it was aware of the breach involving a third-party contractor and that the exposed data was historical and partially anonymized.
“The Australian Cyber Security Centre was alerted to the breach in the first week of October and immediately contacted the external contractor to secure the information and remove the vulnerability,” the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet said in a statement yesterday.
Meanwhile, Malaysia is investigating the theft of mobile-phone records for 46.2 million customers, as the government is working with carriers and police to identify possible sources of the leak, state news agency Bernama reported on Wednesday, citing Malaysian Minister of Communications and Multimedia Salleh Said Keruak.
The largest mobile phone companies in Malaysia include Maxis Bhd, Celcom Axiata Bhd and Digi.com Bhd.
The companies, as well as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, did not immediately reply to requests for comments or could not immediately be reached by Bloomberg News.
Maxis, Celcom and Digi told the Star newspaper that they are supporting the investigation.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure