Australia Parliamentary Network Hacked In Possible Foreign Government Attack 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Sydney Morning Herald: National security agencies are continuing to scour the Parliament's computer network for threats to MPs' data after what is being described as a "sophisticated" hack attack that could be the work of a foreign government. Alastair MacGibbon, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, said the government's cyber experts would work over coming days and weeks to make sure all the breaches had been detected and the hackers' presence removed. The hacking comes just three months ahead of the federal election, prompting fears that if MPs emails or data were stolen they could be used to cause political interference of the style Russia perpetrated against the United States in the 2016 presidential campaign. Sources said the fact that Parliament had significantly upgraded its cyber defense since an attack by Chinese intelligence agencies in 2011 suggested the latest hackers were highly skilled, potentially pointing to a foreign government. Mr MacGibbon stressed it was too early to say who was behind the attack but said this part of the investigation. The network is used by all MPs, including ministers. House Speaker Tony Smith and Senate President Scott Ryan said in a joint statement there was "no evidence that any data has been accessed or taken at this time, however this will remain subject to ongoing investigation." They said they had no evidence the hack was an effort to "influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes."
Re: (Score:1)
elephants like peanuts too
anyone seen creimette lately
Evidence? (Score:1)
Set around 9 to 5 Moscow time?
IP range?
Powerful Bear code litter left all over the computer?
Will the magic code litter left to be found be Korean, Farsi, Chinese and Russian?
Did all the data move out on a new 100000/100000 network?
Cut them off (Score:1)
Frankly I really don't know why we, the west, allow interconnects with Russia, China and North Korea.
They are really more trouble than they are worth, cut them off their interconnects and let them pursue their own path.
Re: (Score:1)
A US embassy worker talks with a Russian gov/mil worker and hands them an email address and network information.
Lots of US cash for top secrets emailed out of Russian mil/gov.
Nobody from an embassy, US backed NGO wants to get seen collecting the material sold in person.
So the internet to Russia and China stays on.
Want a color revolution in Russia? To have Communist China become like free Taiwan?
That needs western
Finally, Australia... (Score:3, Insightful)
Australian MPs are starting to learn why private & secure communications are essential for a democracy to function well. Now can they drop the draconian, Orwellian proposals for violating all Australian's privacy?
Re: (Score:2)
Nah they'll just use it as a pretext to ratchet up the paranoid surveilance state. We're talking politicians here, not reasonable men
Re: (Score:2)
Just give them a year's free credit monitoring, let the subcontractor responsible off scot-free, giving them preferred status in future bidding, and everything's ok right? What's good for the goose...
My bet is on man in basement (Score:2)
Alastair MacGibbon, head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre said, "You might know of some of their entry points and some of the ways they’ve grafted themselves into a system and you can take action against those and do things like the password reset,"
The article stinks of a phishing attack and it sounds like they haven't figured out 2FA yet. Which says a lot about his claims of who could be responsible. Who remembers Comodo?
What is interesting about actual nation state attacks now taking place is
Re: (Score:2)
Betcha some MP clicked on a bad link.
I love the second last paragraph of the article:
"This is a great system to be targetting if you are a nation-state. Lots of juicy correspondence between staffers about who is doing what and dirt files on politicians."
Perhaps such networks should be world readable so citizens can see who's wasting government resources gossiping.