Alastair MacGibbon: Optus hack victims told to check for criminal actions by cyber security expert

A cyber-security expert says Optus customers need to watch out for criminals impersonating them online after hackers potentially stole personal details from the entire telco’s client database.

Thursday’s massive cyber breach allowed hackers to access personal details, such as passport and drivers licence numbers, email and home addresses, dates of birth and telephone numbers, of around 10 million Australians. 

Alastair MacGibbon, who is chief strategy officer at cyber-security firm CyberCX and a former advisor to the prime minister, says Optus customers should beware.   

‘Personal information has been stolen,’ he told the ABC.  

‘A lot of personal information for several million people and slightly less information for about 6 million more.

‘They should be looking for whether criminals are mimicking them, or stealing their identity, trying to obtain credit in their name … etc.’

He said Optus could guard the interests of their customers is by paying for credit monitoring.  

‘That way you will be monitored by credit monitoring services if someone has been using your name and other details to obtain credit,’ Mr MacGibbon said.

The cyber expert warned the personal information gathered by a large organisation was ‘potentially valuable for criminals’. 

‘If you collect a lot of information it is more valuable so any company that collects a lot of information is at risk of this type of incident occurring,’ he said.

‘It appears this is about customer data being stolen.’ 

Mr MacGibbon said the breach was ‘pretty significant by Australian standards’.  

‘My understanding is that it is about 9 million people that have been impacted so I am going to say that’s probably the Optus database, which is very significant,’ he said.

‘This size is rare but not completely unlikely in a place like Australia.’