‘Not going to be the last’: Expert’s warning after mass data theft in hack

CyberCX chief technique officer Alastair MacGibbon, who’s advising Latitude on its response to the hack, mentioned the safety breach was not as unhealthy because it appeared.

“I’m not here to say that these numbers are great, clearly you can’t do that,” he informed Today.

“What I can say is that, of those eight million people you refer to, the vast bulk of those driver’s licence details are just the number.

“What which means, in fact, in most states is that’s not a compromise of your driver’s licence and it does not have to be changed.”

MacGibbon said a “massive portion” of the stolen data was also more than 10 years old, meaning people may have moved state.

Additionally, he said, people affected by the Optus or Medicare hack had likely already updated their ID documents, meaning if their data had been stolen from Latitude, it was likely out of date. 

“I believe it is unlikely the numbers will develop,” he said.

But he additionally warned this would not be the top of such assaults.

“What we actually want to deal with listed here are the underlying problems with how we show identification on this nation,” MacGibbon said.

“This just isn’t going to be the final breach. I’ve mentioned that for the final 20 years. The actuality is there may be going to be extra of those.

“We’ve got to change how we collect information and how we identify ourselves in this country and that is the urgent matter that the government needs to start addressing.”