The government of South Australia has revealed that a ransomware attack on its payroll provider has led to the data of around 38,000 to 80,000 government employees being pilfered and potentially posted on the dark web.
Treasurer Rob Lucas said politicians, including Premier Steven Marshall, could potentially be affected by the attack.
“The highest of the high to the lowest of the low and all of the rest of us in between are potentially impacted, with the exception of teachers and the Department for Education,” he said.
Frontier Software, the company that has provided payroll services to the government since 2001, announced on November 16 that it had been hit by a cyber-attack. Yesterday, the company confirmed to the government that its data had been exfiltrated from its network and published on the dark web.
The accessed data consists of employees’ personal identification information like first and last name, date of birth, tax file number, home address, bank account details, remuneration etc.
Frontier Software had said on November 17 that there was no evidence of any customer data being stolen; the company further added that although its corporate systems had been affected by the attack, its Australian customer HR & Payroll data and systems remained safe as they were segmented from the corporate systems.
Despite this, the company said yesterday that its investigation had confirmed that some data had been stolen from its internal Australian corporate environment.
Read original story here www.itpro.co.uk/security/ransomware/361810/south-australia-government-data-breached-in-ransomware-attack