Cyber pushback needs some teeth

Australia is far from being alone in calling out burgeoning Chinese cyber crime linked to Beijing’s notorious Ministry of State Security, the controller of the communist regime’s secret police and intelligence services. Significantly, Monday’s rare statement by the Morrison government, which forthrightly accused Beijing of “malicious cyber activities” and hiring “contract hackers” to steal intellectual property, was co-ordinated with similar strongly worded statements from the US, the EU, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and NATO, a 30-nation alliance. The collective demarche was, according to the Biden administration, “the largest international effort yet to criticise Beijing’s state-sponsored hacking”. The alliance forms part of a global effort to turn the tide on China’s nefarious online activities, including the stark vulnerabilities that emerged in the Ministry of State Security’s highly consequential attack, disclosed in March, on Microsoft’s Exchange email server software. Tens of thousands of public and private organisations across the world were exposed to cyber criminality.

Australia’s statement, issued by Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews, Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton, said attacks this year alone had “undermined international stability and security, opening the door to cyber criminals. China must adhere to the commitments it has made in the G20, and bilaterally, to refrain from cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and confidential business information with the aim of obtaining competitive advantage”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was similarly forthright, declaring: “The United States and countries around the world are holding China accountable for its pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilising behaviour in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security.”

It will be a pity if such stinging indictments of Beijing’s unrelentingly lawless behaviour across the globe turn out to be no more than words without consequences. Significantly, none of the statements – not even that by the Biden administration – raised the possibility of punitive measures or sanctions against China. The importance of so many countries uniting to target China’s malicious online behaviour cannot be overstated. But more than public naming and shaming is needed. It’s time to take the gloves off in confronting Beijing’s cyber criminality and the threat it poses.