A new legal shield aims to protect people battling the hackers behind a massive data breach at Qantas until the money-hungry criminals move onto their next target.
Personal details of 5.7 million customers were compromised in July after a hack of one of the airline's offshore call centres.
Qantas said at the time that no credit card details, personal financial information or passport details had been accessed.
The national carrier obtained final orders from the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday attempting to limit the spread of the leaked information on the internet and dark web.
"The court does recognise that this is a serious societal problem," Justice Francois Kunc said.
"The threat represented to our community, to our commerce by these actors is very real."
Orders suppressing the names of a Qantas expert, and the lawyers and barristers representing the airline in court were deemed necessary by the judge.
This would protect them from retaliation until the overseas hackers who, motivated by money, would start looking for their next victims, the judge said.
“Their attention moves to other things," he told the court.
"I mean they’re busy criminals, and they don't necessarily go back and do a post-mortem seeking a list of enemies.”
Qantas' barrister - who cannot be legally named - told the judge the suppression orders had been fine-tuned to prevent attacks by criminal adversaries.
"‘I think as a systemic approach to dealing with this societal problem, it makes sense to have a temporary shield not to give a target or a bullseye to foreigners," he said.
In July, the airline said it wanted to do everything it could to protect customers' personal information and that the court order was an important next course of action.
The names, email addresses and frequent flyer details of four million customers were exposed.
The remaining 1.7 million customers had more data taken, including their names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, personal or business addresses, gender and meal preferences.
Any person or entity that carried out or aided in the cyber hack and that "communicated payment details" to the plaintiff Qantas will be barred from disseminating the leaked information under the court order.
They have also been ordered to delete the information from all internet-accessible locations including the dark web.
Refusing to obey this direction could result in imprisonment, seizure of property or other punishment.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn has lodged a separate complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) on behalf of affected Qantas customers.
Legal experts suggest the incident could lead to a class action against the carrier after compensation claims were made against Optus and Medibank following major data breaches in 2022.
Australian Federal Police investigators said in July they were also probing the breach.
