The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s website has been hacked during the state’s exam period, with the culprit launching a tirade of expletives and claiming without evidence to have accessed student papers.

On Wednesday evening, a message attributed to someone using the alias “DaggerElite” appeared on the VCAA’s homepage banner, claiming to have sold exam papers to “hundreds of students” across the state. They further alleged VCAA had “dogshit security standards” that had allowed them to “map out this shitshow site and learn all about its internals” and download a copy of 2026 exam papers from its internal file servers.

A spokesperson for the VCAA strongly refuted the hacker’s claims, which they said were “fabricated” and there was “no evidence at all” that any VCE exams had been accessed or leaked.

The hacker also claimed they had sent the exams to the students via an email address belonging to the law firm Go Ahead Lawyers, whose email security system they said they had hacked. A spokesperson for Go Ahead Lawyers said it was “not involved in the reported hacking incident involving the VCAA website” and its firm “did not access or distribute any exam papers”.

The VCAA chief executive, Andrew Smith, told ABC Radio Melbourne that it was working to restore the website as a “matter of urgency”, adding the likelihood exam papers could be downloaded from secure printers was “very, very low”. The incident has been reported to Victoria police.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has started civil penalty proceedings against Commonwealth Bank, alleging customers have been overcharged for fees they were never told about.

The organization alleged CBA’s CommBiz terms and conditions were misleading because they failed to clearly and accurately disclose all the fees business customers would be charged for direct debit and direct credit payments. It is alleged that CBA has also been charging an additional, undisclosed fee for the corresponding movement of money into or out of the customer’s CommBiz account.

The case was filed in the Federal Court late Wednesday afternoon. However, the court has not yet listed the matter for a case management hearing.

It is the second legal action ASIC has taken against a big bank in as many days, with Macquarie Bank on Monday admitting to failures in the promotion of its “welcome” interest rate for new savings account customers, which could result in a $14 million penalty. CBA has been contacted for comment.

NSW police are less likely to divert an Aboriginal child from court compared to a non-Aboriginal child, new data shows.

Under the NSW Young Offenders Act, police can give children a diversion if they have allegedly committed a crime, which aims to reduce a young person’s contact with the court system and likelihood of repeat offending. A diversion can take the form of a warning, a caution or an intervention.

But a report released today by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) found Aboriginal children were 30 per cent less likely to receive a court diversion from police compared to non-Aboriginal children. BOCSAR executive director Jackie Fitzgerald said this disparity existed “even when the alleged offence is eligible for diversion under the Young Offenders Act”.

BOCSAR research labelled the overall disparity as “concerning”, because part of the Young Offenders Act was aimed at reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the justice system. Fitzgerald also said a young person’s “cooperation with police”, and “any bias treatment” were potential reasons that could not be captured by the data.

Superintendent Phil Hallinan from the Youth Crime Command told 702 ABC Sydney he welcomed the report, but said the raw data does not tell the whole story. He added that social determinants which could lead to a child entering the criminal justice system in the first place, including an unstable home life or exposure to alcohol and drug abuse, were not considered as reasons why a young person would not be diverted.