“We found more than 191 Australian organizations affected by the ZircoDATA hacks,” said Sameer Pradhan, cyber security manager at Risk Associates who also works with Cyble.
National Cybersecurity Coordinator of the federal governmentrevealed Friday afternoon that the breach had affected government entities that were ZircoDATA customers, but said it was still working with the company to identify the affected data, so everyone affected had yet to be notified.
On Saturday, the Department of the Interior could not confirm who was responsible for the hacks or which government agencies had been affected, saying it was still investigating.
The CSIRO told this masthead that it was a customer of ZircoDATA, but had not been notified of any exposure due to the breach. He said the company did not have access to his research because it was only used “for the transfer and disposal of paper files”.
The Australian Veterinary Medicines and Pesticides Authority, also listed by ZircoDATA as a client, did not respond to questions.
A report by cybersecurity researchers last year found that Black Basta, which emerged in 2022, has the fourth most active variety of ransomware online, with much of its revenue laundered through the exchange of Russian cryptocurrency, Garantex.
“Since Australia started supporting Ukraine in its struggle [against Russia’s invasion]we have seen an increase in attacks by Russian hacking gangs on businesses here,” Barman said.
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Russian cyber gangs often work with the direct or indirect support of the Kremlin, but experts said it was too early to say that the ZircoDATA breach was state-sponsored.
Melbourne Polytechnic also revealed on Friday that the enrollment details of around 60,000 current and former students had been captured from ZircoDATA, but the information taken was deemed low-risk and limited to names, student ID numbers student, dates of birth and addresses.
ZircoDATA did not respond to requests for comment, but released a statement in February saying it had discovered a hack, worked “to contain” it and notified authorities.
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Monash Health chief executive Professor Eugine Yafele said on Friday he deeply regretted the breach, which did not affect Monash's internal systems.
The National Cyber Security Coordinator described the disclosure of private details about sexual violence and assault victims as “distressing”.