Australian consumer lender refuses to pay ransom after cyber attack

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Latitude Financial, an Australia-based personal lender, has decided not to pay a ransom to cyber criminals who recently stole millions of customer records.

The hack, which was detected last month, resulted in 7.9 million people having their driver’s license details taken and about 53,000 passport numbers compromised. An additional 6.1 million records dating to at least 2005 were also taken, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and birth dates.

“Paying a ransom may be detrimental, with key drawbacks including that it emboldens criminals to continue these tactics, and payments go toward funding these groups to become more sophisticated,” said Sean Duca, chief security officer of Palo Alto Networks in Asia Pacific and Japan.

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The attack affected fewer than 100 monthly financial statements and Latitude is working with authorities to investigate the incident. The company has not detected any suspicious activity on its systems since March 16.

Latitude has insurance policies to cover different types of risks, including cybersecurity risks. It has notified insurers about the hack.