Tag Archive for: Telstra

2016 March – Mobile security and why you should consider Mobile Identity



Following Optus Hack, Another Data Breach for Australia’s Biggest Telcos as Telstra Exposes Employee Data


Just two weeks after Australia’s second-largest telecoms company was hacked, the largest in the market has suffered a data breach. The Telstra breach appears to be relatively minor as compared to the Optus hack, however, as the company reports only a “small amount” of employee data was exposed.

Source of Telstra data breach still unknown, 30K employee files impacted

While the Telstra data breach is considered “relatively” minor given the size of the company, it nevertheless included a substantial amount of records; the company says that some 30,000 employee files dating back to 2017 were exposed. However, the information in each was apparently extremely basic with just names and email addresses contained in most of the breached files.

If that assessment holds up it compares quite favorably to the Optus hack, which exposed the customer records of millions of Australians including driver’s license and passport numbers. The hacker sought profit from the attack, pledging to publicly release the customer records of 10,000 people per day until they received $1 million in ransom. A 19 year-old Sydney man was arrested on October 5 after texting 93 of the victims demanding an individual $2,000 ransom from each, but police say that the man is likely not the breach perpetrator and simply made use of data that the attacker had already made public.

Telstra says that no customers were impacted by the more recent data breach, only current and former employees that were with the company over roughly the past five years. There is also not much detail as of yet about how the data breach happened, in contrast to quick assignment of blame by the Australian government in the case of the Optus hack. That breach is suspected to have originated from an unprotected API that was mistakenly exposed to the internet. Telstra only said that the data breach was at a “third party provider” and did not involve its internal systems, and that a little under half of the exposed records belonged to current employees.

There is no concrete connection between the two data breaches as of yet, but the Telstra attacker took to the same underground forum that the Optus hacker used to attempt to peddle their…

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Telstra boss talks down need for legislation in ransomware fight


The federal government ought to place a greater focus on “community awareness” in the fight against ransomware as the risk of attack continues to escalate, according to outgoing Telstra chief Andy Penn.

But Mr Penn, who chairs the government’s telco-heavy Industry Advisory Committee on Cyber Security, has stopped short of recommending legislation, despite urging the former government adopt a “clear policy position”.

The committee made the recommendation in its annual update last year after observing that it was not clear to business whether paying ransomware gangs was illegal or what best-practice was for incident reporting.

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Penn: Community awareness is the best defence for ransomware.

The recommendation followed a spate of high-profile ransomware attacks including one that forced US pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline to proactively close down operations and freeze its IT systems.

The then government took on the advice shortly thereafter, releasing a ransomware action plan in October 2021 that sought to introduce tougher penalties for criminals and a mandatory incident reporting scheme.

But legislation that would have enacted tougher penalties lapsed at the dissolution of Parliament in April, and legislation for the mandatory ransomware incident reporting regime was never introduced.

The newly minted government is yet to detail its plans in this space, though it could form part of country’s revised Cyber Security Strategy.  A spokesperson from Home Affairs minister Claire O’Neil’s office has been contacted for comment.

In the previous term of government, Labor attempted to force the Coalition’s hand by introducing a bill that would require businesses and government to notify the Australian Cyber Security Centre before paying a ransomware gang.

During his address to the National Press Club on Tuesday, Mr Penn said ransomware remained “major and escalating issue”, estimating that 80 per cent of Australian businesses had experienced an attack in 2021, up from 45 percent in 2020.

Asked whether legislation was important to address ransomware risks and whether it should be an urgent consideration for the new government, Mr Penn said there…

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Telstra, Vodafone team up for mobile speed improvements – Pickr


If you’re with either Telstra or Vodafone, you may seem some faster mobile speeds across some of Australia’s biggest cities thanks to a collaboration.

It’s always good to see companies working together for the benefit of customers across the divide. Even though they’ll typically focus on their own customers, every so often something can benefit everyone.

Take Telstra’s anti-piracy mechanism which it runs across its network, which also affects the virtual operators that use its network. If you’re a subscriber of Mate, Boost, Belong, or Woolies Mobile, you technically use the Telstra network, and therefore get the benefit of the Telstra security system to help prevent an onslaught of scammers.

But it’s not the only thing Telstra is sharing, as it teams with TPG Telecom to restack and essentially defrag 4G spectrum in major cities outside of Sydney. A technical process to better connect parts of the mobile spectrum, it has meant an improvement in mobile data speeds in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Darwin, Hobart, and Perth, with Telstra and Vodafone reporting speed increases of up to 20 percent.

To do this, Telstra and TPG (which merged with Vodafone in Australia) joined several 10MHz spectrum blocks to form 20MHz blocks, a technical process that seems small, but can improve the speed and range.

“Larger spectrum blocks are more efficient and mean we can deliver faster mobile network speeds to our customers,” said Nikos Katinakis, Group Executive for Networks and IT at Telstra.

“Thanks to this project, we have seen average 4G speeds improve in every city where the restack was done by at least 10% and in Canberra and Darwin by 20%,” he said. “This means better speeds and better capacity for our customers in these areas, even at busier times on our network.”

It’s a move that will see subscribers to both Telstra and Vodafone reaping the benefits of improved speed and capability, and may extend beyond the 4G it was applied to in the coming years.

“We are continually looking at ways we can improve the customer experience across our mobile network,” said Barry Kezik, Executive General Manager of Mobile and Fixed Networks for TPG…

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