A Sydney man has been sentenced to an 18-month Group Correction Order (CCO) and 100 hours of group service for making an attempt to benefit from the Optus knowledge breach final 12 months to blackmail its prospects.
The unnamed particular person, 19 when arrested in October 2022 and now 20, used the leaked data stolen from the safety lapse to orchestrate an SMS-based extortion scheme.
The suspect contacted dozens of victims to threaten that their private data could be bought to different hackers and “used for fraudulent exercise” except an AU$ 2,000 fee is made to a checking account below their management.
The scammer is alleged to have despatched the SMS messages to 92 people whose data was a part of a bigger cache of 10,200 data that was briefly printed in a legal discussion board in September 2022,
The Australian Federal Police (AFP), which launched Operation Guardian following the breach, stated there isn’t a proof that any of the affected prospects transferred the demanded quantity.
Following his arrest, the offender pleaded responsible in November 2022 to 2 counts of utilizing a telecommunications community with intent to commit a severe offense.
“The legal use of stolen knowledge is a severe offense and has the potential to trigger important hurt to the group,” AFP Commander Chris Goldsmid stated.
The Australian telecom service supplier suffered a large hack final 12 months, with passport data and Medicare numbers pertaining to almost 2.1 million of its present and former prospects uncovered.
