Australian Parliament Cyber-Hack Attempt

Australian authorities are investigating an attempt to hack into the national parliament’s computer network, two senior lawmakers said on Friday, but there was no evidence yet that any data had been accessed or stolen.

https://twitter.com/petrovdempski/status/1094427413642207232

Experts Comments below:

Dr Darren Williams, CEO and Founder at BlackFog:

“Nobody is safe from cyber-attack, not even governments. Whilst Australian lawmakers have claimed there’s no sign that the hacking attempt aimed to “disrupt or influence electoral or political processes” we are seeing signs of war being waged through coordinated cyber-attacks targeting both citizens and institutions for both political and monetary gain and governments must be prepared.

“Hackers have become increasingly sophisticated and are attacking organisations from all directions. History tells us that cyber criminals will always find a way of getting in so attackers must be stopped from removing or leaking confidential and classified data, before it causes untold damage and potentially brings a company – or in this case a government – down.”

Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at High-Tech Bridge:

“Attribution of such attack can be very expensive and time-consuming, if feasible. The attackers usually have plenty of resources and skills to destroy any technical evidence in an irrecoverable manner.

Moreover, even if some elements will nonetheless permit to charge with the attack one of the alleged suspects, the legal avenues for a viable remedy will very limited and economically futile.

Perhaps, the budget allocated for the forensics is better spent on network hardening and enhancement of continuous security monitoring to prevent such incidents in the future.”

Alvin Rodrigues, Security Strategist, APAC and Sam Ghebranious, Senior Regional Director, ANZ at Forcepoint:

“Reports emerging today that the Australian Parliament’s computer network has been hacked are deeply concerning – and yet not surprising. The government should be lauded for their efforts to quickly identify the breach and take precautionary steps to avert any leakage of data. While investigations into the attack are still underway, the precaution taken – resetting passwords – suggest that nefarious actors may be looking to steal the digital identities/ credentials of approved users, so as to operate within the parliamentary computer network without being identified.

“Internationally, we’re seeing governments and enterprises alike faced with increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks on their infrastructure. We’re learning that traditional security approaches for combatting cybercrimes are no longer effective. To better protect state secrets and intellectual property, nation-state and enterprises need to understand who is internally accessing critical data and why. Organisations (including government) should focus on understanding the normal behaviour of legitimate users, online and offline, who have access to trade secrets. By understanding a normal baseline behaviour, it becomes easier to know when this behaviour changes – signalling a range of behaviours from corporate non-compliance, an attempted breach or a compromised insider.”