A man from Sydney has been given an 18-month Community Correction Order and 100 hours of community service for attempting to exploit the Optus data breach that happened last year. The man, who was 19 when he was arrested in October 2022 and is now 20, took advantage of the stolen records from the security breach to carry out an SMS-based extortion scheme. He sent messages to 92 people whose information was part of a larger group of 10,200 records that were briefly posted on a criminal forum in September 2022. The Australian Federal Police, which started Operation Guardian after the breach, said that none of the affected customers paid the demanded amount. After his arrest, the offender pleaded guilty in November 2022 to two counts of using a telecommunications network with the intention of committing a serious offense. The AFP Commander Chris Goldsmid said that the criminal use of stolen data is a serious offense and has the potential to cause a lot of harm to the community. Last year, Optus suffered a major hack, with passport information and Medicare numbers of almost 2.1 million of its current and former customers being exposed.
This Cyber News was published on thehackernews.com. Publication date: Wed, 08 Feb 2023 15:50:03 +0000