Australian police launch operation to protect 10,000 Optus customers

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Australian police launch operation to protect 10,000 Optus customers

The Australian federal police launched Operation Guardian to protect current and former Optus customers from identity crime and financial fraud.

The AFP s assistant commissioner Justine Gough said the records of 9.8 million customers were exposed in the Optus data breach, but the immediate focus for the federal police will be the 10,000 records including passport, Medicare and driver's licence information that were posted on a data breach website earlier this week.

The post was deleted later and the writer dropped their ransom demands for Optus to pay $1 m, but the 10,000 records were copied and republished by other users on the website.

Gough said that Operation Guardian will provide the protection of those 10,000 people and provide multi-jurisdictional and multilayered protection from identity crime and financial fraud, and the AFP will work with the financial sector to detect activity associated with the breach.

Gough said that Operation Hurricane the operation to find out who obtained the data and attempted to sell it online still continues, with international partners including the FBI and AFP cyber liaison officers across the world.

She said that the alleged offender had used obfuscation techniques to hide their identity online.

She said that this will be a long and investigation and involves large data sources, multiple inquiries.

This is a complex investigation that will take some time. There are complex datasets. It will involve cooperation with law enforcement from across the globe, given that we are talking about a type of crime that is borderless. There are more to come.