Australia is being targeted by a widespread cyber attack originating from a “state-based” actor, the country’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at a press conference on Friday, giving details of what some expert said indicated a link to China.
The attacks targeted the government, public services and private businesses, the PM said. In more details released by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, the cyber campaign –named ‘copy-paste compromises’ appeared to deploy techniques available publicly and exploited known flaws in some specific products and protocols.
“This activity is targeting Australian organisations across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure,” Morrison said, according to news agency AFP, adding: “we know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber-actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the tradecraft used.”
While the Australian PM did not name any country, cyber security experts said the strongest suspicion fell on China. “Many states have good cyber capabilities, but there are very few states that have the capability at the scale the Prime Minister talked about, affecting so many industries. The ones that possibly could at that scale: Russian, US, UK, China. I don’t see any motivation for the first three -- they’ve either got a good relationship with us or have far higher priorities,” said Tom Uren, senior analyst at Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s (ASPI) International Cyber Policy Centre.
“Australia has been on China’s radar for years, and they have previously compromised all of the industries that the PM mentioned,” he said in an interview over email. The analyst added that the present attack appeared to be for stealing information instead of causing disruption or destruction.
{{/usCountry}}“Australia has been on China’s radar for years, and they have previously compromised all of the industries that the PM mentioned,” he said in an interview over email. The analyst added that the present attack appeared to be for stealing information instead of causing disruption or destruction.
{{/usCountry}}The revelations in Australia come at a time when there have been concerns about cyber attacks from China targeting Indian digital infrastructure as a consequence of the escalation in hostilities between the two countries in Ladakh. HT reported on Thursday intelligence inputs that some attacks from China-based actors had been launched on Indian networks such as payment and ATM networks.
“In a conflict, espionage for military advantage is a dead certainty, but I’m not sure that China would try to disrupt Indian operations with cyber capabilities unless the conflict really escalated,” Uren said.
He added that an attack of the kind seen in Australia could impact several sectors with valuable information.
According to news agency AFP, Australia’s public broadcaster ABC cited “senior sources” confirming that China was believed to be behind the attacks.
Australia has in recent weeks enraged China by calling for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and by accusing China of fuelling a virus “infodemic” and engaging in economic “coercion”.
China -- increasingly unwilling to tolerate criticism of its more aggressive foreign policies -- has warned its students and tourists against going to Australia, threatened more sanctions and sentenced an Australian citizen to death for drug trafficking.
(With inputs from AFP)