A network of GP clinics across the country has been hit by a cyber attack with providers now revealing sensitive medical records and personal information was stolen. The network says it is working with government cyber agencies and has sought legal orders to protect the medical information.
The Cardiff Medical Centre and Skin Cancer Clinic front desk, located in the Lake Macquarie region of New South Wales, in an image shared by the Partnered Health facility in 2019.
Melissa Clarke: A network of GP clinics across the country has been hit by a cyber attack, with providers now revealing sensitive medical information and personal data was stolen. The network says it's working with the government cyber agencies and has sought legal orders to protect the medical information. Political reporter Claudia Long joined me a short time ago.
Claudia Long: So 16 of Partnered Health's 57 GP and skin cancer clinics appear to have been caught up in this cyber attack Mel. So they include ones in Melbourne, Sydney, the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast, Coffs Harbour and also Canberra. More details could have also been stolen in Western Australia. So the company is still trying to figure out exactly what's happened there. Now this includes personal details. So that's things like your address, your phone number, which is already when it comes to cyber crime, pretty risky. It can be really bad when those kinds of details are released. But this also includes sensitive medical records. So really personal things like consultation notes, potentially referral letters, pathology results. And we've seen in the past that when these kinds of details and information has been stolen by cyber criminals, they've used it to sell on the dark web or essentially to attempt to blackmail people. Now that hasn't, as far as we know, happened here yet. But you can see why people will be very concerned to hear that this has potentially been leaked and stolen. So this attack happened on June the 23rd. Some affected patients have just been contacted over the last day or so. The company's taken legal steps with an injunction against any publication of this data. Given that the cyber attack already breaks the law, it's unclear exactly how effective that'll be.
Melissa Clarke: And Claudia, this has happened just as the federal government has been warning businesses to step up their security against attacks just like this.
Claudia Long: Yeah, that's right. So ASD, the Australian Signals Directorate, which is our cyber intelligence agency, issued a warning with almost two dozen of their international partner agencies specifically Russian-linked hackers. So they say that these hackers are working on behalf of Russia's intelligence agency, that's the FSB, and targeting really critical Australian industries. So things like defence, but also things like communications and energy and banks, like the things that keep this country running. And basically ASD would like you to update your password, please. They've said that one of the ways that these hackers are targeting these pieces of infrastructure is just guessing default passwords and targeting poorly protected routers. So that's their message is, you know, there's some pretty basic things that people need to be doing. We've also heard a lot AI accelerating these kinds of attacks as well. We know that that's on the federal government's agenda after the prime minister's speech yesterday. And the federal government's going to be coordinating with the states and territories on new standards around this. That's going to be pretty interesting, given that ASD has identified state and local governments as being particularly vulnerable, Mel.
Melissa Clarke: Claudia Long there.
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