Foreign hacker could be to blame for cyber-security breach at federal parliament

Calls for top bureaucrats to be hauled before a parliamentary security committee amid concerns a foreigner breached politicians’ IT systems.

The cyber security breach forced all users, including federal MPs, to reset their passwords. Picture: istock

Labor MP Anthony Byrne has called for top bureaucrats to be hauled before the parliamentary intelligence and security committee amid concern among federal MPs a foreign hacker has breached the IT systems of politicians.

Mr Byrne, the deputy chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, has demanded an explanation from the heads of the Department of Parliamentary Services and the Australian Signals Directorate after the parliamentary systems were breached last night forcing all MPs to change the passwords.

“It is absolutely imperative that our parliamentary information services be protected from foreign interference and foreign influence,” Mr Byrne told The Australian.

“I am not satisfied that that is occurring and I want the Department of Parliamentary Services and the ASD to brief the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security as soon as possible to reassure me they are doing everything they can to keep our information systems safe.”

Head of Australian Cyber Security Centre, Alastair MacGibbon, and Mike Burgess, Director-General of Australian Signals Directorate visited Parliament House on Friday.

The Australian understands the government has not concluded whether a state actor was involved, but believe the attackers were sophisticated and not bedroom hackers.

Authorities have not attributed the incident to a particular hacker or state actor.

Scott Morrison says there was “no suggestion” government departments or agencies had been the target of the incursion.

“But on the other one, I don’t propose to go into any sort of detailed commentary on the source or nature of this,” the Prime Minister said.

“Once further information is available, then we’ll be in a position to provide further detail.”

Bill Shorten said the attack on the parliamentary service was a “wake up call” and urged the government to take a higher priority on cyber security.

“What happened today in parliament is all part of a bigger picture. The internet is fantastic but there are people out there in the cyber world who want to do Australians and Australian business, and Australian security harm,” the Opposition Leader said.

“I think this government needs to ramp up the priority it is paying on cyber security. Just because you can’t see who your enemy is because they are on the internet, doesn’t mean they are not the enemy.”

He said there also needed to be more investment for cyber security of business.

“If I’m prime minister I’m going to invest a lot more in the cyber security of our small and medium-sized enterprises,” he said

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching told The Australian she had doubts on whether the Department of Parliamentary Services had the expertise to deal with the growing cyber threat facing politicians.

Senator Kitching said Australians needed to be assured there was not foreign interference in the political process.

“We don’t want interference in the political process as we have seen in US elections and that has affected the French election,” she said.

Senator Kitching said she would also demand a full briefing from the department or warned she would go after them in the next Senate estimates.

“The fact that we have been asked to reset our passwords would indicate that someone has breached the security of the system,” Senator Kitching said.

“If we don’t receive a briefing with further information I will be asking questions about this because people have to know whether the email systems of parliamentarians, given the sensitive information that is communicated, that it is secure.

“This is happening with increasing frequency and patching up the system is not sufficient.

“There was a serious outage late last year, this is another one. We have been asked to reset our passwords which means there is some breach. And it is happening with increasing frequency and I wonder whether they have the requisite expertise to deal with an increasing cyber security threat.”

Late on Friday, politicians were also asked to reset their passwords on the parliamentary expenses system, which tracks their use of public funds for work purposes.

In the message sent to MPs they were told the move was a preventive step.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Tony Smith and Senate President Scott Ryan issued a statement saying the cause of the “cyber incident” would take time.

They said there was no evidence “at this time” that data had been accessed or taken but it would remain the subject of an ongoing investigation.

“Similarly, we have no evidence that this is an attempt to influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes,” they said in a joint statement.

“The Department of Parliamentary Services and relevant agencies are working jointly to take the necessary steps to investigate the incident, while our immediate focus has been on securing the network and protecting data and users.

“While there is no guaranteed approach to cyber security, best practice is the ability to detect and remediate threats quickly. The department has done this working jointly with expert agencies.”

All users of the parliamentary system reset their passwords overnight and this morning.

University of New South Wales cyber security researcher, Tom Sear, said according to his monitoring, cyber incidents targeting Australian parliamentary systems were on the rise.

“I would say it would appear to be more frequent from my observations,” he told The Australian.

“They follow this pattern, it happens overnight, all the systems are utterly down, there’s nothing accessible. Which sort of brings the whole parliament to grounding halt to some extent.”

The Australian Signals Directorate is working with the Department of Parliamentary Services to investigate the incident.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said the breach sounded serious, given all users had to change their password.

He said there should be questions raised about the efficacy of cyber protection of the system.

“If it has led to everyone having to change their passwords on the system that suggests there has been a reasonably serious breach and therefore you would have to question how adequate was the protection to begin with,” Mr Jennings told The Australian.

“There would be several thousand users of the Australian Parliament House system so if everyone has got to change their password I would suggest it is a pretty comprehensive problem.”

Mr Jennings said the spectrum of potential culprits could range from “kids in a garage” or an actor from a foreign government.

He noted a Chinese government actor breached the system in 2010, leading to cyber security enhancements.

“Being the parliamentary system you would expect regular attempts at hackings. That would lead you to think they would have better than average protection systems,” Mr Jennings said.