The Tasmanian government is now investigating a major data breach that has resulted in sensitive documents related to schoolchildren and their parents being made available on the dark web.
The hack occurred through a third-party transfer service, GoAnywhere MFT, and has potentially exposed the personal information of thousands of children and their families.
Madeleine Ogilvie, Tasmania’s Science and Technology Minister, reported that approximately 16,000 documents had been released by hackers overnight. Investigation results showed a potential risk of financial data from the department, including names, addresses, invoices, and bank account numbers, being accessed by the hackers.
“This is a financial data set, and it contains personal information such as statements and invoices. You can expect to find this kind of information on these types of statements,” Ms Ogilvie told reporters.
There are fears that the Russian hacker group clop, which initially released a sample of the data before unleashing the thousands of pages of documents, could release even more data as a result of the cyber attack.