Australia’s major political parties victims of cyber attack by a ‘sophisticated state actor’, PM says

The computer networks of Australia’s major political parties have been attacked by a “sophisticated state actor”.

The computer networks of Australia’s major political parties have been the subject of a cyber-attack by a “sophisticated state actor”, the Prime Minister has told Parliament.

The news comes after the attempted hack of Australia’s parliamentary network in early February.

“Members will be aware that the Australian Cyber Security Centre recently identified a malicious intrusion into the Australian Parliament House computer network,” Mr Morrison said in a national security statement in the House of Representatives.

“During the course of this work, we also became aware that the networks of some political parties, Liberal, Labor and Nationals have also been affected.

“Our security agencies have detected this activity and acted decisively to confront it.

“Our cyber experts believe that a sophisticated state actor is responsible for this malicious activity.”

Previously Australia has blamed China and Russia for cyber-attacks.

Mr Morrison said there is no proof cyber-attacks have led to electoral interference, but the Australian Electoral Commission is being briefed and any political party will be provided support.

“Let me be clear ... there is no evidence of any electoral interference,” he said.

“We have put in place a number of measures to ensure the integrity of our electoral system. I have instructed the Australian Cyber Security Centre to be ready to provide any political party or electoral body in Australia with immediate support, including making their technical experts available.

“They have already briefed the Electoral Commission and those responsible for cyber security for all states and territories. They have also worked with global anti-virus companies to ensure Australia’s friends and allies have the capacity to detect this malicious activity.

“We have acted decisively to protect our national interests.”

Bill Shorten said political parties need more support to protect themselves against cyber-threats and that progressive outfits are more at threat from “ultra-right” hackers.

“As the Prime Minister has indicated, government institutions, such as our Electoral Commissions are largely well protected, but our party political structures perhaps are more vulnerable,” he said.

“We have seen overseas that it is progressive parties that are more likely to be targeted by ultra-right wing organisations.

“Political parties are small organisations with only a few full-time staff, they collect, store and use large amounts of information about voters and communities. These institutions can be a soft target and our national approach to cyber security needs to pay more attention to non-government organisations.”

The opposition leader said there needed to be a more centralised approach to tackling cyber attacks.

“We need a cohesive national approach through the Cyber Security Centre as a single entity, responsible for managing the cyber mission in totality and reporting up there a single chain,” Mr Shorten said.

“We perhaps need to consider whether the Australian Cyber Security Centre should be the single point of contact and accountability for all cyber-related communication, reporting, sin response, crisis communication, management, threat intelligent capability, operations and policy.

“This centre should remain based in the Defence portfolio and continue to report to the Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate.”

China last week rejected that its agencies were behind the cyber attack on federal parliament.

Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the suggestion that Chinese government backed hackers may have been behind the attack were “part of a larger smear campaign against China.”

“China has always maintained that cyber security should be upheld by all members of the international community as it is a global issue that concerns the common interests of all countries,” said Ms Hua.

Australian Cyber Security Centre head Alastair MacGibbon has said government cyber experts still did not know whether any data had been stolen from parliamentarians or political parties.

“We don’t know. These are very early days,” he said.

He was also unable to say whether the state actor had been completely eliminated from the networks.

Mr MacGibbon said, however, experts took “extraordinarily fast remediation action” to protect the data of politicians and the political parties. He declined to say how many days after the parliament house cyber attack that cyber spies realised that the systems of political parties had also been attacked.

ASIO head said the attack had now been “managed”.

The Department of Parliamentary services has been subject to criticism after the attack. Mr MacGibbon said DPS’ cyber defences had been enhanced in recent times and he was “not going to throw a stone” at the department.