Midday News Bulletin 4 July 2025
Qantas to contact millions impacted by cyber hack
Three Aussie hopefuls through to round three Wimbledon A former royal commissioner has hit out at governments for failing to act sooner on a national regime for working with children checks. After it was revealed a Melbourne childcare worker was charged with more than 70 sex offences, state and federal ministers have been rushing to fast-track sector reforms. 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown had a valid 'working with children' clearance when he allegedly abused eight children under the age of two at a Point Cook facility in Melbourne's southwest. In 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse called on the federal government to facilitate a national model for working with children checks. Robert Fitzgerald, one of five members of the royal commission, says the recommendation remained unfulfilled. Federal Labor MP Dan Repacholi told Channel Nine that more must be done.
"It's absolutely sickening what's happened down here in Victoria, and as Jason Clare admitted yesterday, there is more that should have been done a little bit quicker, and we're acting on that. We're working heavily with the state government, so both Victoria and New South Wales governments, we support the changes they're putting in, and we'll continue to work with them and make sure that we are putting those kids front and centre to make sure that they're getting the best care they can, and the best education they can as well.'
Qantas says next week it will contact the six million customers whose data was hacked into by cyber criminals, informing them of exactly what type of information was collected. After revealing the hack earlier this week, Qantas assured customers the breach did not expose sensitive information such as bank details, passport numbers, or frequent flyer points. The company says the group responsible for the incident remains unclear and they have not received a ransom request. Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson says the airline is working with government authorities to investigate the incident.
"I know this data breach is a serious concern. I know the stress that it has created for many, many millions of customers that we've had. And so right up front, I want to say, we take this seriously, and we are going to do everything that we can to communicate transparently to you and also support you through this process."
The Federal Emergency Management Minister has announced an additional $45 million has been put in a flood recovery package for western Queensland, with support for New South Wales primary producers. Jointly funded by the state and federal governments, the cash injection is set to support primary producers, tourism operators and small businesses impacted by the flooding. The additional support will offer eligible primary producers grants of up to $75,000 to assist with clean up, repairs, replacing lost or damaged assets, and restocking and replanting. Kristy McBain says recovery will be a long-haul effort.
"We want to make sure that the three levels of government are working together seamlessly to help the community to recover from what's been a devastating event. But this has been the cumulative and compounding impact of a number of rain and flooding events in the mid north coast and the Hunter region. We recognize that primary producers in particular have been doing it tough, and that they will need that additional support to replace, plant and equipment to work on fencing and to replace livestock."
New South Wales Police have arrested a 63-year-old woman at Sydney Airport after she allegedly defrauded a 77-year-old woman using a 'blessing scam'. Th elderly Chinese woman is the latest victim of a scam targeting people of Asian background, with more than 80 incidents reported since 2023 and over $3 million stolen. The scam involves convincing people their wealth needs to blessed and encouraging them to hand over large sums of money and valuables. The items are then swapped for items of no value and the victim is told not to open the bag for an extended period of time.
A police strike force has been running since April, investigating alleged blessing scams across Sydney since 2023.
Consumer regulator the ACCC, is warning consumers about online 'ghost stores' - which claim to be small, local operators with high quality products - when they're actually based overseas, selling products from third-party suppliers. The regulator says they typically include the name of an Australian town or suburb in their brand or website address, claim to be closing, adding a sense of urgency, and use targeted paid advertising on social media platforms. They can also use A-I generated images, have no or limited contact details, a return address different to the shipping one, and may have recently created social media pages. ACCC Deputy chair Catriona Lowe says they're hoping to work with platforms where ads are appearing.
"So, one of the things that we've done is written to Meta and we've asked them to come back to us and talk to us to tell us what they're doing to make sure these ads on their platform can be picked up and stamped out, similarly, many of these stores are using Shopify and we've similarly written to Shopify."
To tennis now, Alex de Minaur and Daria Kasatkina, Australia's biggest Wimbledon hopes, have fought their way into the third round of Wimbledon. In perfect sunny conditions, Alex de Minaur brushed off a poor first set against French qualifier Arthur Cazaux, before showing some signs of his best tennis in a 4-6 6-2 6-4 6-0 victory. Then, after his fellow Sydneysider Aleksandar Vukic was defeated by world Number 1 Jannik Sinner, the other national Number 1, Kasatkina, defeated old Romanian rival Irina-Camelia Begu.
So, there'll be at least three Australians in the last 32, with Jordan Thompson having made it into the third round on Wednesday.
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Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson regret over Scattered Spider cyber attack
A cyber attack was the furtherest thing from Vanessa Hudson's mind, as she enjoyed her annual leave far away from the New South Wales' 'bomb cyclone' for the heatwave of Europe. But that quickly changed on Monday after a phone call from a fellow executive telling the Qantas CEO 'suspicious activity' was detected on a database where the details of six million customers were stored. 'As soon as I heard the breach had happened, I stopped everything I was doing and I connected with the team and was leading our response,' said Ms Hudson from London. 'All our focus was understanding what occurred, and the time gap between communicating to customers was so we could advise with 100 per cent confidence that no passport details had been breached, no credit card numbers and the Frequent Flyer system was completely secure.' A statement to the ASX and the media was released Wednesday morning, outlining the attack had accessed customers' names, birthdates, phone numbers, email addresses and loyalty numbers — enough information to cause anxiety for the millions affected. What made it worse was the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had issued a warning three days beforehand that hacker group Scattered Spider was targeting the aviation community, with attacks on WestJet and Hawaiian Airlines. Ms Hudson said that warning had been communicated by Qantas to its call centres on Friday June 27 — apparently to no avail. 'Unfortunately the cyber criminal in this instance was able to gain access to what is a customer service platform and that was following an interaction with a call centre operator (in Manila),' she said. 'I'm sure you would appreciate that we really do want to avoid further action by other cyber criminals so I have felt that it's important not to provide a lot more of the specificities around what's occurred.' While she does not want to attribute blame, various cyber experts have highlighted striking similarities between Scattered Spider's MO and the Qantas infiltration. The criminal organisation is believed to have evolved from a group of young people trading secrets on social media for how to cheat playing video games, to something much more sinister. 'The group is notorious for targeting large enterprises — often by exploiting IT help desks via social engineering,' said Rapid7 senior director of threat analytics Christiaan Beek. 'Their end goals are typically data theft and extortion. In some intrusions, they have partnered with or acted as affiliates of ransomware gangs.' Unlike the Medibank cyber attack in late 2022 which was attributed to Russia's Aleksandr Ermakov, Scattered Spider's members came from the US, UK and Canada. Okta's Brett Winterford said the group is not only motivated by profit but the 'desire to score a big win that impressed their peers'. Only last month, Scattered Spider targeted retailers including North Face, Cartier and Victoria's Secret, following on from a spate of attacks on UK retailers Harrods, Marks & Spencer and Co-op. US insurers including Aflac, Erie Indemnity and Philadelphia Insurance have also been under siege from the group — all hit in what appeared to be co-ordinated attacks during a five day period last month. As yet Qantas has received no ransom demand, nor has the stolen information been shopped for sale on the dark web. But that's not to say the 6 million individuals caught up in the attack are in the clear — and Ms Hudson stressed that vigilance was critical. 'That is obviously the reason why we acted so quickly and so transparently with our customers,' she said. Within hours of the suspicious activity being confirmed on Monday, Ms Hudson said she notified her chair, John Mullen, and the government. 'We are continuing to work really effectively with the government cyber teams and also the AFP because this is a criminal matter,' she said. Experts agreed that Qantas customers risk being targeted by follow-on social engineering attacks. This includes potential credential stuffing – the same method hackers used earlier this year to siphon hundreds of thousands of dollars of retirement savings from Australian industry super funds. Ms Hudson described her 'concern and great regret' the attack had occurred, but she said Qantas' response would help the airline's mission rebuilding trust. 'Trust is something that has to be earned both in the good times and also in the hard times and I think in the hard times in this context and where we're at, the way in which you continue to support customers being transparent with them, being open and being supportive goes to an important part of customers' understanding that we're focused on them, even in the hard times,' she said. Customers were reassured Qantas' systems were now secure, with more details of the extent of the data breach for individual customers expected next week. Until then Ms Hudson encouraged customers to visit the Q&A on the website and app, and call the customer support line. 'I mean this is an increasing global threat for organisations and for all of us in the modern digital world and we have to learn from these events,' she said. Originally published as Qantas CEO's 'great regret' over cyber attack on customer database storing personal details
