{"id":66676,"date":"2026-08-06T23:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T23:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/66676\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T23:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T23:14:17","slug":"hackers-leak-sensitive-victorian-court-data-to-dark-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/66676\/","title":{"rendered":"Hackers leak sensitive Victorian court data to dark web"},"content":{"rendered":"

The personal information of Victorian court users has been posted on the dark web, sparking a police investigation.<\/p>\n

Names, emails and job titles of people who attended online hearings in regional courts were posted on an underground hacking forum in July.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A user has claimed responsibility in a post.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The post on the dark web forum. The ABC has pixelated a sample of the data to protect the privacy of people identified. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The data breach comes after a ransomware cyber attack in 2024<\/a>, suspected to be the work of Russian hackers, and an incident in 2021, when the Children’s Court inadvertently posted case information online.<\/p>\n

Court Services Victoria (CSV) confirmed the latest breach related to participants of online hearings in the Magistrates’ Court and Children’s Court divisions.<\/p>\n

The ABC understands some of the leaked data includes highly-sensitive details, such as the names of parties in family violence intervention order hearings and children’s court cases.<\/p>\n

CSV said the data, spanning from 2022 and 2026, related to hearings in Bendigo, Castlemaine, Echuca, Kerang, Kyneton, Maryborough, Mildura, Ouyen, Robinvale and Swan Hill.<\/p>\n

Other publicly available information, such as case names and courtrooms, was also included in the data dump, CSV confirmed.<\/p>\n

The forum user who said they posted the material wrote that they had acquired 28,600 lines of court records.<\/p>\n

A small sample of the information posted on the hacking forum appears to show metadata taken from the court’s WebEx system, which hosts online hearings.<\/p>\n

IT news outlet cyberdaily.au reported details of the breach last week.<\/p>\n

Number of affected people unknown<\/p>\n

CSV has advised people<\/a> concerned for their safety to call police or make a report to victim support services.<\/p>\n

In a statement, a CSV spokesperson said the number of people affected was unknown.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Police are investigating the data breach. (ABC News: Dominic Briggs)<\/p>\n

The Victorian Information Commissioner, Victoria Police, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and justice sector parties have been notified.<\/p>\n

“Some of the information has been published on an unauthorised website,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“For security reasons, we cannot comment on the specific details of our response to this incident.<\/p>\n

“CSV and the courts made considerable efforts over some time to verify the data that had been accessed.<\/p>\n

“In many instances the data was incomplete, inaccurate, and complex, and CSV has been unable to verify the number of people impacted.”<\/p>\n

Police confirmed cybercrime squad detectives were investigating.<\/p>\n

“Victoria Police is also working with CSV to manage any identified risks to Victoria Police data,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“As the investigation is active and ongoing, it is not appropriate to comment further at this time.”<\/p>\n

Children’s Court data exposed in 2021<\/p>\n

It is illegal to publish the identities of children facing Victorian courts unless special permission is granted by a judge.<\/p>\n

The ABC alerted the Children’s Court to an apparent breach of the law five years ago, when after the court hosted a publicly accessible webpage containing court lists.<\/p>\n

“On becoming aware of the page it was immediately removed and an investigation was commenced into how the information was made available, and to ensure that this does not occur again,” the court said at the time.<\/p>\n

“We take confidentiality very seriously and we are grateful that you have brought this to our attention.”<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

The dark web user also claims to have hacked the Melbourne International Film Festival\u00a0 (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The dark web forum user claimed they had also acquired customer data from several other Australian organisations, including a travel company and the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).<\/p>\n

In June, MIFF said some 26,700 customers may have been impacted by a ticketing hack<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The personal information of Victorian court users has been posted on the dark web, sparking a police investigation.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,12091,83790,1110,83791,10620,31269,5177,26538,21299],"class_list":["post-66676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-childrens-court","tag-court-services-victoria","tag-courts","tag-cyber-safety","tag-data-breach","tag-hack","tag-magistrates-court","tag-melbourne-international-film-festival","tag-miff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}