Hackers target Tatts Club as fight over women members continues

The president of Brisbane’s elite Tattersalls Club has launched a broadside against a shadowy website which is campaigning against opening the institution up to women, with some members saying their details have been handed out without their consent.

Hackers have targetted Tattersall's Club in Brisbane.

UNDER ATTACK

IT seems the Pentagon and the Kremlin are not the only targets of computer hackers these days. We hear our very own Queen Street Workers’ Club, aka Tattersalls, has become ground zero for computer espionage, with club president Stuart Fraser warning that there were now 3000 hacking attempts each day on the club’s central data base. What on earth could the hackers be after? The recipe to the ham and pea soup served in the chap’s dining room? The roster to the weekly billiards fixtures or the wine list in the cellar?

Fraser tells his comrades that none of the attacks on the database have succeeded but it “has taken additional steps to protect the member portal which may result in some downtime.”

Of course, City Beat spies are joining the dots and wondering whether the intense interest in the database has anything to do with the current civil war over whether to allow women to become full members. Members voted in favour of allowing women in late last year but that vote is now the subject of a court challenge.

FACT OR FICTION?

COMMISSAR Fraser in a missive to members last week launched a broadside against a shadowy website called TattsMyth, which is campaigning against allowing women as members. Fraser notes that many members have reported that their details have been handed over to TattsMyths without their consent.

“The owners of the TattsMyths campaign host their website offshore and utilise anonymous Twitter and Facebook pages,” Fraser complains. “TattsMyths is registered offshore which means its owners can breach privacy legislation, defame fellow members and bring the club into disrepute with limited consequences.” Ouch!

Jane Edwards, with husband Sir Llew Edwards, is celebrating a business milestone. File picture

BIG 30

JANE Edwards has been a force to be reckoned with in the local public relations game for over three decades and shows no sign of slowing down. Edwards’ firm BBS Communications Group celebrated its 30th anniversary over the weekend, a big achievement in an increasingly tough media environment.

After working as a press gallery journalist in Canberra, Edwards made her switch to public relations in 1988, leading the worldwide communications strategy for Expo ’88. She co-founded BBS soon after, making it one of the oldest independent PR consultancies in Australia. Edwards says the key to BBS’s years of success has been remaining ahead of the rapid changes in the industry, while maintaining an ‘old-fashioned’ approach to relationship building.

As well as leading BBS, Edwards has been the honorary consul for France in Queensland for nearly 20 years, was the founding chairman of the annual Premier’s Literary Awards and the first woman in 103 years to chair the Board of Trustees of the Queensland Art Gallery. And of course, she is married to Liberal Party statesman Sir Llew Edwards. We hear there are a series of staff and client celebrations planned to commemorate the event.

SCHOOL ZONE

WINDSOR State School wasted no time in putting its mark on the old Officeworks site located adjacent to its playing grounds. City Beat readers will recall that in a rare win for our kids over the increasing pressure to develop our inner city, the site was returned to the Education Department late last year to serve the growing needs of the school. The building has now been demolished leaving an open expanse of land that will form part of the school‘s future master plan. We hear the old Officeworks building was knocked down because as it was a warehouse space it wasn’t fit for purpose as a classroom or other educational use.