Alleged Optus hacker apologises for data breach and drops ransom threat

Online account claims it published records of 10,000 customers and threatened to release more before change of heart

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An alleged attacker who was seeking a ransom payment from Optus in exchange for millions of customer records published 10,000 records online on Tuesday before retracting the threat and deleting all demands.

On Monday night the alleged attacker uploaded a text file of 10,000 records to a data breach website and promised to leak 10,000 more records each day for the next four days unless Optus paid $1m in cryptocurrency.