8 Million Driver License, Passport Details, Financial Statement Stolen in Australia in Massive Theft

In a large-scale information theft, 7.9 million Australian and New Zealand driver’s license numbers were stolen on March 16, a report has said.

Apart from the driver’s licence numbers, the passport numbers of 53,000 and a monthly financial statement of around 100 customers were also stolen, a report in Reuters quoted digital payments and lending firm Latitude Holdings as saying.

The report also said that 6.1 million records since 2005 were stolen. The Melbourne-based Latitude Holdings also said that customers who choose to replace their stolen ID document will be reimbursed.

“We are rectifying platforms impacted in the attack and have implemented additional security monitoring as we return to operations in the coming days,” Ahmed Fahour, CEO of Latitude Holdings, said in a statement.

Several other Australian firms have also reported cyberattacks over the past few months. According to experts, the theft is due to understaffed cybersecurity.

Meanwhile, the stock of the company fell 2.5 percent to 1.18 Australian dollars (about $0.78), with shares having dropped by about 2.1% since the company reported the incident.

“Whenever investors hear of a ‘data breach,’ they tend to assume the worst … it seems much of the doom and gloom was priced in two weeks ago when news of the cyberattack first broke,” Matt Simpson, senior market analyst at City Index, told Reuters.

The theft was alerted by the company last week that it had unearthed further evidence of information theft.

The company, earlier this month, said that Australian Federal Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre were looking into the attack.

The firm provides consumer finance services to major Australian retailers Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.

Earlier this month, Latitude took its platform offline and said the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Cyber Security Centre were looking into the attack.

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