Crown Resorts has been hit by a massive global data breach after a hacker group revealed they had obtained company files. The Australian gambling operator has already confirmed that it is currently investigating a possible data breach, with the data have been allegedly obtained after a file transfer service.
According to recent revelations, Crown Resorts has become one of the several organisations caught up in a global data breach. A ransomware group of hackers recently contacted the gambling company and claimed they had managed to illegally obtain a number of files by breaching the file transfer service GoAnywhere.
As a company spokesman shared at the beginning of the week, the validity of these claims is now being investigated as a matter of priority. The Australian gambling giant’s representative said that the operator can confirm that its business operations had not been impacted and no customer data had been compromised as a result of the alleged data breach.
Crown Resorts further noted that it would continue to work in collaboration with law enforcement agencies and had already informed the gambling regulatory bodies in its domestic market as part of the ongoing investigation. The operator pledged to provide relevant updates on the matter as necessary.
Multiple Companies Have Already Been Hit by Hackers Demanding Ransom in Return for Their Stolen Data
The revelations about the alleged data breach into Crown Resorts’ files have come at a time when the Australian financial technology company Latitude Financial Services revealed it had found that 14 million customer details had been stolen as part of a hacker attack two weeks ago.
Alastair MacGibbon, the chief strategy officer of CyberCX that has been advising the fintech company on the hack, noted that Australia simply has to adapt to the latest trends in order to get on top of similar breaches that have been lately occurring on a daily basis. Mr MacGibbon explained that an increasing number of people seem to have been affected by Optus and Medicare attacks, and now, the number of people affected by the breach into Latitude Financial Services’ data is even larger. According to him, the fact that Crown Resorts has also been among the organisations impacted by hacker attacks proves this is something that happens on a daily basis.
The firm noted that approximately 7.9 million driver’s licences were stolen in Australia and New Zealand, with an additional 6.1 million customer records that date back to 20 years ago being stolen from Latitude Financial Services. Furthermore, about 53,000 passport numbers were also illegally appropriated.
Crown Resorts and Latitude Financial Services have become the latest victims in a series of Australian businesses that have become the target of cybercriminals, along with some telecommunication service providers and an insurance company.
In September 2022, a hacker approached telecommunications company Optus with a demand to pay cryptocurrency ransom or they would leak millions of its Australian customers’ data.
Then, in October 2022, Medibank, a local private health insurance provider, unveiled that it had been affected by what it called a “cyber incident” after it managed to detect some unusual activity on its network. At the time, it became clear that the details of approximately 10 million former and current customers were leaked as a result of the breach, with the hackers eventually unveiling some of the data randomly on the dark web. Some highly-private details of customers, including health procedures and diagnoses, were exposed. The hacker group then demanded AU$15 million ransom from the health insurer in return for the stolen data.
- Author
Olivia Cole
