Australia fingers foreign intelligence for cyber attack

The Australian government is blaming foreign intelligence service for a malware attack against Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology which might have spread into other government networks.

The development now adds credibility to warnings by cybersecurity experts who have blamed countries like China and Russia for malicious online attacks, though the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s (ACSC) first public report did not say which foreign power authorised the December 2015 attack.

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In the report, the ACSC said it “attributed the primary compromise to a foreign intelligence service”, and noted that “security controls in place were insufficient to protect the network from more common threats associated with cybercrime”.

The centre “identified the presence of particular Remote Access Tool malware popular with state-sponsored cyber adversaries, amongst other malware associated with cybercrime”, the report said, adding that the same malware had been used to compromise other unspecified government networks.

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