NSW government major target of cyber attack
The latest industrial-scale cyber attack on Australia was almost identical to one on federal parliament last year, as it’s revealed the NSW government was a major target of the ‘state-based cyber actor’.
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The NSW government has been identified as a major target of the large scale cyber attack launched on Australia.
The finger has been pointed at China as ‘the state-based cyber actor’ responsible for the sophisticated attack on various levels of government and infrastructure earlier this year.
The NSW government was the target of those attacks, according to reports and was one of the reasons why Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned the country about the occurrence.
The latest industrial-scale cyber attack on Australian industries and institutions had an almost identical signature to the one on the federal parliament last year, that saw non-sensitive data stolen from MPs.
The code reuse match was identified by one of the world’s leading cyber security firms Palo Alto Networks, that partners with the federal government’s cyber security agency.
Sean Duca, Palo Alto’s Vice President and Regional Chief Security Officer for Asia Pacific and Japan, said the hacker used the same open source tool method as in the February 2019 attack.
“We don’t know what the objective was by the attacker but obviously they were very targeted, very focused and showed a level of sophistication there,” Mr Duca said, adding it was a timely reminder for tighter systems security.
“Cybersecurity risks hold a level of uncertainty, however this demonstrates the importance of a public-private partnership and how it will enable a new level of flexibility and strength through the opportunity of knowledge sharing as cyber threats become more sophisticated,” he said.
China was long suspected of having made that attack last year – that saw the hacker in the system for eight days injecting malware into the parliamentary computing network – but confirmation it was behind the latest hack makes that now almost certain.
Mr Duca said every organisation, public or private, needed to go back to the drawing board and critically analyse their own systems.
“We should be using multi-factor authentication anywhere and everywhere from accessing remote services, websites, anything that is public facing. People are being tricked and duped into clicking on links going to websites and giving up their credentials and using the same password on multiple sites, effectively giving an attacker access to a range of different systems.”
He said there was a need to better patch operating systems and applications, have multi-level authentication processes and treat cyber security like hygiene.
“Like when I wake up I brush my teeth, these are things that have to be done, that we have to do on a regular basis.”
A draft internal audit three months after last year’s attack found multiple failures in systems and an “ad hoc” approach to all elements of information security management.
The Department of Parliamentary Services, tasked with security, said since then “significant advancements have been made this year to strengthen our physical and cyber security capability”.
Mr Duca said no blame could be apportioned in this instance but it was a timely reminder to all, software and operating systems have weaknesses that hacker will look to exploit.
Originally published as NSW government major target of cyber attack