Australia sanctions Russian hacker for Medibank breach

SYDNEY -- Australia will "hold cybercriminals to account," Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Tuesday as she announced sanctions against a Russian national over the 2022 hack of the country's largest private health insurer.

Aleksandr Ermakov is the first individual sanctioned under Australia's autonomous cyber sanctions framework, established in 2021 as a tool to target individuals or entities involved in digital attacks. As a "thematic" sanctions regime, rather than country-specific, it can be applied to sanctionable contact that occurs anywhere in the world.