Latitude Financial says stolen staff login led to theft of 328,000 records

Latitude Financial, an Australian consumer credit provider that supplies point of sale finance for retailers including Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys, disclosed on 16 March 2023 that it had been attacked. The company entered a trading halt on the Australian Securities Exchange the same day.

Latitude said an attacker obtained a Latitude employee login and used it to reach two service providers that held company data. Roughly 103,000 identification documents were taken from the first provider, more than 97 per cent of them copies of driver's licences, and about 225,000 customer records were taken from the second, for a combined total of around 328,000. The company said the activity was believed to have originated from a major vendor, and it did not name either provider.

Latitude took some customer facing and internal systems offline to contain the incident, engaged external cyber security specialists, and notified the Australian Cyber Security Centre and law enforcement.

The company warned at the time that its investigation was continuing and that the totals could rise, which they did. On 27 March Latitude revised the scope to about 14 million customers and applicants across Australia and New Zealand, including roughly 7.9 million driver licence numbers and about 53,000 passport numbers. The company later said it would not pay a ransom demand.