IT contractor faces new charges over LandMark White data breaches

Sydney IT contractor Stephen Grant will face nine additional charges over the alleged unauthorised access of LandMark White’s database while he was employed as an IT contractor.

NSW Police on Thursday said detectives from the state’s Cybercrime Squad had laid the new charges against the 49-year-old man in relation to the ASX-listed company’s data breaches.

The new charges include eight counts of dealing with identification information to commit indictable offence and unauthorised access with intent to commit serious indictable offence.

They bring the total number of charges to 24 for the unauthorised database access, which exposed more than 170,000 data records to the dark web and the internet.

Other charges include five counts of unauthorised modification of data with intent to cause impairment and two counts of impairing electronic communications to and from computer.

Grant, who has been refused bail, was arrested and charged in October following a three month investigation by the cybercrime squad.

LandMark White had repeatedly claimed the breaches, which resulted in their share price toppling, were an inside job aimed at sabotaging the company.

Following his arrest, multiple raids were carried out by cybercrime detectives and the public order and riot squad as part of the investigation, including on an Ultimo data centre.

The raids seized servers, computers, laptops and storage devices.

Grant is due to appear at Sydney’s Central Local Court later today.

Investigations under Strike Force Vide are continuing.