Alleged Optus hacker apologises for data breach and drops ransom threat

The alleged attacker who claims to be behind the Optus breach has apologised to 10,000 customers and retracted a ransom threat. Photograph: Bianca de Marchi/AAP

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.