Australian National Maritime Museum hit by alleged 'trusted insider' attack

A third-party IT contractor working at the Australian National Maritime Museum allegedly accessed its accounting system and “illegally changed bank account details stored in the system to his own.”

Credit: Australian National Maritime Museum.

The Sydney man, aged 23, was arrested and charged by federal police; he appeared in court on Friday last week.

The museum allegedly detected anomalies in financial information related to “contracted companies” in November last year and engaged independent forensic investigators, who identified the alleged fraud.

In addition to allegedly altering details of stored accounts, police said the financial details of several individuals and businesses were also unlawfully obtained, resulting in the man allegedly using credit card information to make a series of unauthorised purchases.”

Cybercrime operations investigators from the Australian Federal Police alleged they had been able to link the man to “unauthorised access of several systems and servers.”

Police raided the man’s home in Macquarie Park in Sydney’s north, where they seized a laptop, hard drives and a mobile phone, which will be subject to further forensic analysis.

AFP detective leading senior constable Clare Yammine said trusted insiders “remained a very real threat to the Australian community”.

Yammine estimated the “total value of money allegedly diverted in this matter at $90,000”.

“We will allege the motivation for this activity was greed, and it came at the expense of hard working Australians who are already feeling the impacts of everyday living expenses,” Yammine said in a statement.