Senator fears foreigners able to hack parliamentary emails

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching has called for full oversight of the parliamentary IT system to be shifted.

Labor Senator Kimberly Kitching says she will grill top bureaucrats from DPS on what happened last Friday when the Parliament House system was compromised. Picture : David Geraghty

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching has called for full oversight of the parliamentary IT system to be shifted to the nation’s foreign intelligence agency, saying the Department of Parliamentary Services lacks the capacity to protect politicians’ emails from being hacked by foreign actors.

The Victorian senator and close ally to Bill Shorten said she would use Senate estimates hearings today to grill top bureaucrats from DPS on what happened when politicians were forced to change their passwords twice last Friday because the Parliament House system had been compromised.

Senator Kitching said she would demand answers from DPS and officials from the Australian Signals Directorate, believing early answers were needed, given the election was about three months away.

She said urgent efforts should be taken to ensure the May poll was safeguarded from foreign interference, and the DPS, headed by Rob Stefanic, should be stripped of its oversight of the parliamentary system given the increased risk of foreign hacking.

“DPS can’t even manage connectivity in Parliament House,” Senator Kitching said.

“Now that’s one thing. But not being able to guarantee security of the email system, which carries extremely sensitive information in some cases, that is another matter and we can’t just wait until they develop expertise.

“We have to either bring it across or bring those systems under the purview of an agency with the capacity to safeguard it.

“ASD (already) lends expertise to DPS, I would imagine. And the ASD, they are a really top level agency, so there is a great deal of trust for them.”

A Department of Parliamentary Services spokeswoman refused to say how it collaborated with ASD to prevent foreign hacks.

Emails went down about 3am on February 8 but MPs were not notified of the breach until the system was back online after 9am. DPS notified MPs about the breach via email, despite politicians not having access to the system, leaving many unaware of the situation.

Senator Kitching noted a Chinese foreign actor had compromised the system in 2011 and stayed in the system for about a year. She said there were international examples of the danger of hacks, including the 2016 US presidential election.

“We don’t want a repeat of that. We are about to have an election, we don’t want any foreign actor and any foreign interference in our electorate processes,” she said.

“It seems that there are increasing numbers of failures in the system. And given that we know that some actors have increasingly sophisticated knowledge and ability to create security breaches, we have to be more vigilant than we have been in the past.”

The Weekend Australian reported a fortnight ago that Labor MP Anthony Byrne demanded DPS and ADS bureaucrats be hauled before a parliamentary committee amid concern among federal MPs that a foreign actor was behind this month’s breach.

“It is absolutely imperative our parliamentary information services be protected,’’ Mr Byrne said.