In a shocking development, Latitude Financial Services has issued an update to its initial data breach notification, revealing that the breach is much more significant than previously thought.
The Australian loan giant initially stated that the breach affected 328,000 individuals but it now believes that 14 million customers or loan applicants from Australia and New Zealand were impacted.
According to Latitude's statement, the intruder stole an employee's login to breach two of the company's service providers holding Latitude's customer data.
Subsequently, the attackers accessed approximately 7.9 million Australian and New Zealand driver's licence numbers, of which approximately 3.2 million were provided to the company in the last 10 years.
Furthermore, the attackers also stole around 6.1 million customer records dating back to at least 2005, including customers' full names, addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth.
The incident comes amid a sharp increase in cyber-attacks against Australian businesses, with the country's cybersecurity agency, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), reporting a 13% rise in cyber-attacks during 2022.
Earlier this week, Crown Resorts, Australia's largest casino operator, was targeted by a ransomware group that claims to have accessed some of the company's files following a data breach at its file transfer service.