Telstra Denies Scattered Spider Data Breach Claims Amid Ransom Threats

Telstra has denied claims by the hacker group Scattered Spider that it suffered a massive data breach affecting nearly 19 million personal records, stating that its internal systems remain secure and that the data in question were scraped from publicly available sources rather than stolen.

According to IT Security News, the claims originated from a dark web post published on 3 October by Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters, an offshoot of Scattered Spider, which alleged it had stolen more than 100GB of personally identifiable information. The attackers said the data included names and physical addresses and warned that company executives should negotiate to avoid further exposure.

They claimed the breach took place in July 2023 and threatened to release the data publicly if a ransom was not paid by 13 October 2025, while also asserting possession of over 16 million records contained in a file named telstra.sql, part of a larger 19 million-record collection. The investigation into the alleged breach remains ongoing as the ransom deadline nears.