Tech Talks With Kinsoft

On 12 March 2026, Australian, New Zealand and Pacific (including Tongan) cyber authorities — led locally by the ACSC — issued a joint advisory warning of rising INC Ransom ransomware-as-a-service activity against critical infrastructure, linked to around 11 Australian organisations, mainly in healthcare and professional services. INC Ransom typically enters via compromised credentials, escalates t...

Your Monday catch-up, with a security lens. This week: OpenAI moves to acquire AI red-teaming startup Promptfoo, and Anthropic sues the US Defense Department over its "supply-chain risk" label. On the breach desk: medtech giant Stryker is knocked offline by an Iran-linked wiper, outsourcer Telus is hit by ShinyHunters, and Michelin and Ericsson both disclose breaches. Worried a destructive attack...

An attacker used the stolen credentials of a French government employee to access the national bank account registry FICOBA for about 16 days (late January–February 2026), exposing data linked to roughly 1.2 million bank accounts — IBANs, names, addresses and in some cases tax identifiers. Account balances were not accessed. FICOBA tracks nearly 300 million accounts for around 80 million people; t...

A WA Office of the Auditor-General report (released 6 March 2026) found systemic Microsoft 365 security failures across seven state entities. Two concrete incidents: sensitive information about 32 people (including minors) was emailed to a third party who uploaded it to a later-compromised Dropbox; and a senior officer's M365 account was phished (weak MFA), leading to a business email compromise a...

Your Monday catch-up, with a security lens. This week: OpenAI ships GPT-5.4 with a native computer-use capability, and Nvidia's CEO signals its AI-lab investing spree may be done. But the dominant theme is breaches in healthcare and data brokers — a cancer centre, a health-claims processor, and LexisNexis all disclose major losses of sensitive records. Hold sensitive health or customer records? Vi...

Singapore's Cyber Security Agency attributed a sophisticated espionage campaign against all four major telcos — M1, SIMBA, Singtel and StarHub — to the China-nexus group UNC3886. Active since around July 2025, the attackers exploited Fortinet and VMware zero-days plus advanced Linux rootkits to hold persistent access for close to a year before being evicted. The response, Operation Cyber Guardian,...

In February 2026 it emerged (ABC News, 16 Feb; VIQ statement, 20 Feb) that Canadian transcription provider VIQ Solutions had subcontracted Australian court transcription to India-based e24 Technologies in breach of its Commonwealth contracts, resulting in sensitive Federal Court and Federal Circuit and Family Court files being accessed offshore. Staff had reportedly raised offshoring concerns sinc...

Your Monday catch-up, with a security lens. A blockbuster week for AI money: Nvidia posts a record quarter, OpenAI closes a $110B round, and the Trump administration blacklists Anthropic over its refusal to drop weapons and surveillance restrictions. On security: a Russian-speaking actor uses AI to mass-compromise Fortinet firewalls, ShinyHunters hits CarGurus and Wynn Resorts, and AI-generated co...

Detected on 19 February 2026, a ransomware attack on the University of Mississippi Medical Center disrupted its network and IT systems, including the Epic electronic medical record system. UMMC closed most of its clinics statewide (kidney dialysis excepted), cancelled outpatient surgeries, procedures and imaging, and reverted to pen-and-paper documentation. Clinics stayed closed about nine days, r...

Victoria-based Hazeldenes, one of Australia's largest poultry producers (roughly 900,000 birds a week at its Lockwood South facility), detected a cyberattack on 19 February 2026 and shut down its IT systems, halting processing and packaging. The result was immediate chicken shortages for wholesalers, butchers and supermarkets across Victoria, with some deliveries failing without notice. Hazeldenes...

Your Monday catch-up, with a security lens. This week the model race sped up — Google ships Gemini 3.1 Pro, Anthropic ships Claude Sonnet 4.6, and OpenAI hires a star open-source developer to build personal agents. On the breach desk: fintech lender Figure is hit by the ShinyHunters crew (nearly a million customers), France's national bank-account registry is accessed via stolen credentials, and a...

In February 2026, Dutch telecom Odido (formerly T-Mobile Netherlands) disclosed a breach affecting roughly 6.2 million customers across Odido and its Ben brand. Attackers linked to ShinyHunters used social engineering — phishing and impersonating IT staff to bypass MFA — to reach a customer contact system, taking names, addresses, bank account numbers, phone and email, and ID document numbers (pas...

On 12 February 2026, Seagrass Boutique Hospitality Group (Rhodes, NSW — operator of The Meat & Wine Co, Hunter & Barrel and other brands) identified unauthorised access to part of its IT network, with the Kairos ransomware gang claiming the attack and alleging it stole about 50 GB of data. Seagrass declined further comment. We discuss why hospitality groups — with payment systems and large...

Your Monday catch-up, with a security lens. This week: OpenAI pulls GPT-4o and a swag of older models out of ChatGPT, pushing everyone to GPT-5.2. On the security desk it's a heavy one — the EU Commission and Dutch government are breached through Ivanti zero-days, China-linked espionage hits all four of Singapore's telcos, Dutch telco Odido loses data on 6.2 million customers, and a malicious Outl...

In January 2026, a major cyberattack targeted the Victorian Department of Education, compromising the personal data of over 665,000 current and former students . Unauthorized parties accessed a central database containing student names, email addresses, and encrypted passwords across more than 1,500 government schools. Experts attribute the scale of the breach to a "flat network" architecture that...

Welcome to Tech Talks with Kinsoft . In this episode, we examine the escalating cyber threats facing Australian education, highlighting the significant August 2025 breach at Melbourne’s prestigious Scotch College which exposed sensitive family and alumni records. We also discuss the massive January 2026 attack on the Victorian Department of Education, impacting over 665,000 students across 1,700 s...

Welcome to Tech Talks with Kinsoft ! In this episode, we unpack the massive January 2026 cyberattack on Prosura, an Australian car rental insurer. Hackers breached their internal IT systems, exposing the sensitive personal data of roughly 300,000 customers, including driver's licenses, travel destinations, and policy details. We discuss the aggressive tactics used by the threat actors, who shockin...

Welcome to Tech Talks with Kinsoft . In this episode, we explore the recent cyber incident targeting major Australian gold producer Regis Resources. We discuss how their layered security controls successfully thwarted the Lynx ransomware group, preventing data exfiltration and operational downtime. Beyond this high-profile case, we examine a growing national trend: why Australia's most damaging cy...

In this episode of Tech Talks with Kinsoft, we explore the alarming cyberattacks hitting Australia's defence supply chain. We unpack the massive 800GB data breach at IKAD Engineering by the J Group ransomware gang, who lurked undetected in the company's network for five months. We also examine the Cyber Toufan group's leak of sensitive technical details regarding the ADF's $7 billion Redback infan...

In this episode of Tech Talks with Kinsoft , we examine two significant Australian cyber incidents: the University of Sydney data breach and the iiNet customer exposure. We discuss how attackers exploited a development code library to access the personal data of over 27,000 staff and students, and how stolen credentials led to the compromise of 280,000 iiNet customer records. We break down the cri...

In this episode of Tech Talks with Kinsoft , we examine the critical cyber security incidents impacting Australian businesses in November 2025. We discuss the massive data breach at Queensland firm Kelly Legal, where the INC Ransom group claims to have exfiltrated over 447GB of sensitive client and HR data. We also analyse the serious supply chain compromise affecting the Redback infantry fighting...

This episode investigates the systemic vulnerabilities plaguing Australian healthcare, anchored by a critical analysis of the Medibank breach that exposed 9.7 million records. We explore a proposed "entropy-aware" Differential Privacy framework designed to mask sensitive attributes like diagnosis codes through noise injection while maintaining analytical utility. The discussion extends to the rece...

This episode examines the October 2025 cyberattack on Benedict Industries, a prominent Australian recycling and resource company. While the firm maintains rigorous Air Quality Management Plans to mitigate physical dust emissions from its sand and soil extraction operations, they recently struggled to contain a digital breach. The hacking group INC Ransom claimed responsibility, allegedly exfiltrat...

Join the hosts of Tech Talks with Kinsoft as they discuss the significant cyber incident affecting ReadyTech’s VETtrak system in October 2025. This episode examines the breach that resulted in over 13,000 files appearing on the dark web and the subsequent NSW Supreme Court injunction restricting access to the data. We also explore the impact on education providers like VACCHO and the importance of...

Join us on Tech Talks with Kinsoft as we examine the recent cyberattack on Community Based Support (CBS) Tasmania,. In October 2025, the Lynx ransomware gang targeted this aged-care non-profit, allegedly exposing staff and limited client data despite the group’s claims that they avoid targeting such sectors,,. We discuss CBS’s swift response to contain the incident and maintain operations, while h...