Telstra’s Pacnet Breached by Hackers

Australian telecommunication company Telstra informed on Wednesday that its recently acquired subsea cable company Pacnet has had a security breach, potentially making its costumers vulnerable.

According to reports, Pacnet was hacked on April 3, approximately two weeks before Telstra completed the acquisition of Hong Kong and Singapore-based company.

The US$697 million acquisition was announced in December last year, marking Telstra’s plans to boost its subsea fibre network. Telstra was made aware of the breach on finalisation of the purchase on April 16 this year.

According to Telstra’s chief information security officer Mike Burgess, the vulnerability was an SQL Injection, a type of web attack used by hackers to steal data from organisations.

The company also said it’s in the process of informing its customers about the incident on the Pacnet corporate network. “We have no evidence that data has been taken but we wish to inform them because of the nature of the breach,” explained Burgess.