Hackers have swiped the personal records of around 14 million Australian and New Zealand clients of the consumer lender Latitude Financial, the firm said on Monday.
Though the attack was first uncovered earlier this month, a “forensic review” discovered the number of people impacted was far larger than was previously known — the equivalent of about half the two countries’ merged population.
We recognize that today’s announcement will be a distressing development for many of our customers and we apologize unreservedly,”
The firm said
It discovered that the details of 7.9 million Australian and New Zealand driver’s licenses had been stolen, as well as 53,000 passport numbers. Another 6.1 million records dating back to at least 2005 with data such as names, addresses, telephone numbers, and dates of birth were also hacked.
Australia and New Zealand’s combined population is 31 million. Latitude initially considered that only about 330,000 clients had their data robbed.
Ahmed Fahour, the chief executive of Latitude Financial said that it is hugely disappointing that such a significant number of additional customers and applicants have been affected by this incident. We apologise unreservedly.
We continue to work around the clock to safely restore our operations. We are rectifying platforms impacted in the attack and have implemented additional security monitoring as we return to operations in the coming days.”
Ahmed added.
Latitude Financial said the Australian federal police were investigating, and that it was working with cyber-security experts from the government as well as its advisers.
The company said it would refund customers who decided to replace their documents. It said no suspicious activity had been detected on its systems since March 16.
