This appeared last week:
‘Keeps me up at night’: How Australia’s government sees hacker threat
Nick Bonyhady Technology writer
Feb 29, 2024 – 4.24pm
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has warned of a growing threat of cyber sabotage to Australian power, telecommunications, health and water infrastructure despite ransomware capturing public attention.
In an interview, Ms O’Neil did not name China as a direct threat, but her comments come a month after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed it had disrupted a Chinese state-led hacking project called Volt Typhoon, which had broken into critical American computer systems.
Where most Australians are familiar with data breaches at big companies, Ms O’Neil told The Australian Financial Review she was increasingly concerned about how Australia would recover from a cyberattack on essential infrastructure.
“The thing that keeps me up at night is critical infrastructure and sabotage,” she said.
“What would we do, and how should we prepare for infiltration of systems that Australians rely on just to survive? How are we going to make sure that those systems are resilient and that, if they do come under cyberattack, we are able to repair and restore very quickly?”
Ms O’Neil’s decision not to specify a country that she believed could be responsible for breaching Australian networks matched ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, who issued a similar warning on Wednesday.
Mr Burgess added the caveat that adversaries scanning Australia for digital weaknesses were “not planning to conduct sabotage at this time”.
The minister, who is also responsible for the cybersecurity portfolio, said hackers were not only after classified information, but also other details that helped other nations understand how things work in Australia.
They were also trying to “build a picture of our way of life, the way that we make decisions, how systems work across business and government”, Ms O’Neil said. “And I think we’re kind of getting a little bit of insight into that from recent incidents.”
Chinese cyber army
FBI director Christopher Wray said in February that his digital agents were outnumbered by China’s hackers 50 to one, but democracies were increasingly collaborating on cybersecurity. A coalition of countries including Australia in February took down much of the online presence of the hacking group Lockbit, believed to be behind the DP World hack.
Professor Ciaran Martin, who was the inaugural head of the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre, said LockBit’s subsequent efforts to revive itself appeared to be more show than substance.
“The key lesson, though, is they’re going to try and come back, and they might rename themselves, or some new personnel might appear on the scene,” Professor Martin said, speaking alongside Ms O’Neil from Canberra.
Authorities arrested some LockBit members in Eastern Europe as part of the operation, but others remain at large. LockBit licensed its software to affiliated criminal groups who would use it to disable their targets’ computers and steal data, facilitating ransom demands.
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Enough said!
David.
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