Latitude Financial has revealed that a cyberattack announced earlier this month stole more than 14 million customer records containing sensitive personal information.
The Melbourne-based consumer lender said in a statement today that hackers had stolen 7.9 million Australian and New Zealand driver’s license numbers, 40% of which had been submitted to the company in the past decade. I was.
Additionally, 6.1 million records were stolen dating back to 2005, 94% of which were provided before 2013. However, many of these are still valid as they contain personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.
About 53,000 passport numbers were also stolen, along with financial statements related to “less than 100 customers.”
Latitude Financial originally claimed that the breach only resulted in the loss of approximately 100,000 identification documents and 225,000 customer records.
For more information on data breaches in Australia, see 489% surge in Australian data breaches in Q4 2022.
Although it claims no suspicious activity has been observed since March 16, the company is likely to be significantly affected by the incident.
Customers are more likely to be exposed to convincing phishing attacks that use stolen data to obtain financial details, and scammers can also purchase information online to attempt identity fraud.
Latitude Financial CEO Ahmed Fahour described today’s news as “very disappointing” and apologized to affected customers.
“We are committed to working closely with affected customers and applicants to minimize risk and disruption. That includes refunds, and we are also working on a full review of what happened,” he added. .
“We encourage all of our customers to be vigilant and cautious of any suspicious activity related to their accounts. We will never contact customers who request their passwords.”
Although the exact method is not clear, the attackers were reportedly able to obtain the credentials of Latitude employees to access the documents.
Latitude Financial is Australia’s largest non-bank lender, offering a Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) service to the country’s top retailers.
