Cyber-attack on Victoria's court system may have exposed recordings of sensitive cases
Recordings of highly sensitive court cases have been stolen by hackers in a ransomware attack on Victoria’s court system. Court staff were locked out of their computers just before Christmas and are now trying to contact members of the public who may be affected by the breach.
Transcript
00:00 On December 21st, court staff found themselves locked out of their computers, looking at
00:06 a message saying that compromising and sensitive data had been downloaded and giving them the
00:11 address of a site on the dark web with instructions on how to recover the files.
00:16 Court Services Victoria says this hack is limited to a computer network that contains
00:20 audio visual files and says no other information like employees' personal data has been compromised.
00:27 But those files contain witness testimony from some extremely sensitive cases heard
00:32 between November 1st and December 21st.
00:36 And it includes every case heard in the county court, including at least two that involve
00:40 historical or child sexual abuse.
00:43 There are cases from the Supreme Court network, committal hearings from the Magistrates' Court
00:47 and one possible Children's Court case.
00:51 Court Services Victoria is now trying to locate and notify people who may appear in those
00:56 recordings.
00:57 Today, it's set up a dedicated contact centre.
01:00 The hackers appear to have got in through an email phishing attack, possibly by tricking
01:05 an employee into clicking on an unsafe link.
01:08 Court Services Victoria says the affected network has now been isolated and the court
01:13 system will resume as normal in January.
01:16 But what is not known publicly is what the hackers' ransom demands are, whether they
01:21 will be met and when the stolen recordings might be recovered or leaked.
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