Australian National University Hack 'Goes Back' 19 Years

The Australian National University in Canberra has been hacked and the information of around 200,000 people, dating back 19 years, has been breached.

That information includes everything from names and addresses, phone numbers and personal email addresses, to tax file numbers, payroll information, bank account details and passport details.

The university was initially hacked during late 2018 but the breach wasn't discovered until May 17. News of the hack was held back for two weeks while the university protected the system from further attacks.

"The university has taken immediate precautions to further strengthen our IT security and is working continuously to build on these precautions to reduce the risk of future intrusion," said ANU vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt. "I assure you we are taking this incident extremely seriously and we are doing all we can to improve the digital safety of our community."

This is the second time in 12 months that the ANU has been the subject of a cyber attack. In July 2018 the university issued a statement saying it was working with intelligence agencies to minimise the impact of a data hack that had lasted seven months. The ANU said it did not believe any data was compromised during that attack, but could not confirm it.

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