AAPT has pulled the plug on their Melbourne IT servers after a major attack on their online operation.The carrier has admitted that it is the target of a major data leak orchestrated by hacker movement Anonymous. The company yesterday released a statement confirming that customer records stored on servers operated by its supplier Melbourne IT had been stolen.

The statement follows a tip by an active member of Anonymous who told The Australian the hackers planned to leak a large cache of data stolen from a major Australian ISP.

In the statement AAPT chief executive David Yuile revealed that Melbourne IT had notified it of the breach on Wednesday – around the time that Anonymous originally planned to release the data on one of its Web sites.

While this did not eventuate, The Australian says it has been warned the hackers still plan to release the data, but have taken longer to strip customer information from the large file.

“AAPT immediately instructed Melbourne IT to shut down the servers when we were notified of the incident,” Yuile said. He said, while serious, the data was “historical” – but also admitted that the company did not know what was contained in the data.

“We are undertaking a thorough investigation into the incident with Melbourne IT and the relevant authorities to establish exactly the type and extent of data that has been compromised, how the security incident happened and what further measures are required to prevent any future incidents,” he said.

Anonymous still plans to leak the data but it revealed earlier yesterday that it was taking longer than expected to wash the data of information that would identify customers.

Anonymous sees leaking the data as a protest against Federal Government proposals to make new laws requiring ISPs to record and store information about their customers’ online habits for two years.