Hackers Strike Australia's Largest Pension Funds in Coordinated Attacks (reuters.com) 11
Hackers targeting Australia's major pension funds in a series of coordinated attacks have stolen savings from some members at the biggest fund, Reuters is reporting, citing a source, and compromised more than 20,000 accounts. From the report: National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a statement she was aware of "cyber criminals" targeting accounts in the country's A$4.2 trillion ($2.63 trillion) retirement savings sector and was organising a response across the government, regulators and industry. The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, the industry body, said "a number" of funds were impacted over the weekend. While the full scale of the incident remains unclear, AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, Rest, Insignia and Hostplus on Friday all confirmed they suffered breaches.
Passwords stolen from where? (Score:2)
The fund's own servers? Or maybe something external like a web browser or app?
So who is responsible for the loss? (Score:2)
TFA doesn't say that the providers have to provide restitution...
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I suppose that would depend on Australian law and exactly what sort of accounts these were. If it is some sort of trust account, where the pension fund holds the balances until the monthly checks go out, then it was actually the pension fund that got hit. Not 20,000 accounts.
On the other hand, if these are like demand accounts, where the retirees can draw funds, then each of them was robbed individually (sort of like someone stealing your debit card). There may be recourse, but that's up to Australian law
Not Everything Needs to be Online (Score:2)
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How would you like people to manage their accounts? Are they supposed to call in every time they want to change something? How secure is that?
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And even if it was 100% secure, would the overhead of dealing with that save money compared to the occasional breach?
(This isn't me saying that security is stupid, but that even though networked computers can add risk, it can still cost less than the alternative).
/. is an American site (Score:1)
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its like aluminium
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Question from an American - What is a "pension"?
Strictly speaking, the TFA is wrong: it was superannuation accounts that were hit.
To answer your question: "pensions" are almost the same as Social Security. Yes, there are important differences, but it's a close enough analogy.
"Superannuation" is almost like a 401(K).
I speak as an Australian living in the US.