By Christine Chen
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Hackers targeting Australia's major pension funds in a series of coordinated attacks have stolen savings from some members at the biggest fund, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, and compromised more than 20,000 accounts.
National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a statement she was aware of "cyber criminals" targeting accounts in the country's A$4.2 trillion ($2.63 trillion) retirement savings sector and was organising a response across the government, regulators and industry.
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, the industry body, said "a number" of funds were impacted over the weekend. While the full scale of the incident remains unclear, AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, Rest, Insignia and Hostplus on Friday all confirmed they suffered breaches.
AustralianSuper, the country's largest fund managing A$365 billion for 3.5 million members, said that up to 600 member passwords had been stolen to access accounts and attempt fraud.
"We took immediate action to lock these accounts and let those members know," AustralianSuper's Chief Member Officer Rose Kerlin said, urging all members to check their online balances.
Four AustralianSuper members had a combined A$500,000 drained from their balances and transferred to other accounts that did not belong to them, according to the source, who was not authorised to speak publicly about the matter.
AustralianSuper did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Australian Retirement Trust, the second-largest fund managing A$300 billion for 2.4 million members, said it had detected "unusual login activity" affecting "several hundreds" of accounts. It locked impacted accounts as a precaution, though there were no suspicious transactions or changes made.
Rest Super, the default industry pension fund for retail workers, with A$93 billion of assets under management, said it suffered an attack that impacted around 20,000 accounts, or around 1% of its 2 million members.
"Over the weekend of 29-30 March 2025, Rest became aware of some unauthorised activity on our online Member Access portal," Rest CEO Vicki Doyle said.
"We responded immediately by shutting down the Member Access portal, undertaking investigations and launching our cyber security incident response protocols."
Insignia Financial, which owns the pension fund MLC, said it detected "suspicious" login activity on 100 Expand Wrap Platform customer accounts. MLC Expand CEO Liz McCarthy said there had been no financial impact at this stage to members.