Clive Palmer’s two political parties, United Australia Party (UAP) and Trumpet of Patriots, have suffered a data breach.
UAP has confirmed that it detected unauthorized access to the political parties’ servers on June 23, which has led to potential access and removal of data records.
”We were the subject of a ransomware cyberattack,” UAP said in a statement today.
The data records comprise all emails sent to and from the two political parties, including their attachments, as well as documents and records maintained electronically by the political parties.
People’s personal information, including email address, phone number, identity records, banking records, and employment history, has been affected.
“We cannot be certain of what specific information of yours was on the server, but it should be assumed that any data you provided would have been stored there,” UAP stated.
The political parties do not keep a record of everyone who was on the server, so they deemed it “impracticable” to notify those affected by the breach. 
Instead, they are securing their systems and restoring recoverable data from back-ups.
“We sincerely apologise for this incident and are taking steps to ensure it does not happen again,” UAP said. 
Anyone who has emailed either of the political parties is advised to review their communications to identify what information was provided and potentially compromised.
“We recommend you carefully consider whether you need to take any action in response to the data breach on the assumption that the hackers may have accessed your data,” UAP said.
“The action you might take could include monitoring your bank accounts, changing passwords, using multi-factor authentication, contacting your bank and being vigilant about use of your identity.”
The breach has been reported to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Australian Signals Directorate.
Palmer voluntarily deregistered UAP in September 2022.
Ahead of this year’s federal election, he was forced to form a new party so his candidates could appear under a party on the ballot papers.
He started the Trumpet of Patriots in February and won no seats at the election.
