Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned that the Australian government as well as private organisations have been subject to sustained cyber-attacks from a “sophisticated state-based cyber actor” on Friday morning during a news conference.
The announcement comes just days after Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne called out online disinformation campaigns from China and Russia.
Scott Morrison read a prepared statement to reporters in Canberra saying that the activity was targeting “Australian organisations across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers, and operators of other critical infrastructure.”
“We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the tradecraft used,” he said.
When questioned on which country was involved, Morrison would not be drawn, saying, “The threshold for public attribution on a technical level is extremely high.”
“Australia doesn’t engage lightly in public attributions, and when and if we choose to do so is always done in the context of what we believe to be in our strategic national interests,” he said.
Morrison did say however, “What I can confirm is there are not a large number of state-based actors that can engage in this type of activity and it is clear, based on the advice that we have received, that this has been done by a state-based actor, with very significant capabilities.”
“Regrettably, this activity is not new. Frequency has been increasing,” he added.
Morrison said he was making this announcement now to “raise awareness of these specific risks” and encourage organisations to take “expert advice and to implement technical defences to thwart this malicious cyber activity.”
