Vodafone Linked To Massive West Australian Data Breach

PERTH: The medical details of scores of West Australians have been hacked and posted online in one of the State’s biggest privacy breaches. Thousands of State Government communications were published on a public Web site.

A paging service operated by Vodafone has been linked to the WA data breach, with messages including private health information published on the now-closed Web site.

“As soon as we became aware of a Web site illegally publishing paging messages, we took immediate action and had it shut down within hours,” a Vodafone spokeswoman told the ABC.

News site WAToday said the most sensitive information related to the management of the Covid-19 crisis in WA. A teenage culprit is said to have been identified.

More than 400 Web pages, many containing communications and messages between health officials and doctors were posed on a chat site. They included details of people in quarantine, their phone numbers and addresses, and how their cases were being managed.

Premier Mark McGowan said the compromised communications system had been switched off. A review of WA’s Health Department data systems is under way.