Australian Government and businesses hit by state-based cyber attack, PM says | Hacker News Reader

Australian Government and businesses hit by state-based cyber attack, PM says

news.com.au

73 pointsdeviation52 comments

There's more details in the NCSC write up:

https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy-past...

Thank you! But I don't see anything in there that isn't normal attempted cybercrime. What Steve Gibson dubbed "Internet Background Radiation", the continual poking for vulnerabilities.

The mitigations are hilarious too:

- Update

- Use 2fa

The same government which pushes for encryption nullification. What will we update to, eventually, backdoored encryption standards?

Not just "pushes", they have already passed a law where they can secretly force sysadmins to create backdoors for them under threat of 15 years jail, with no legal representation. No warrant necessary, just the approval of a retired judge. And no reporting. You can't make this shit up.

Stasi commandant Dutton has also recently introduced a bill to interrogate 14 year olds with no legal representation as well.

Bloody scary what's happening here.

I don’t understand what’s going on in Australia. Why are there so many draconian spying and privacy invasion laws there? When I think of countries affected by terrorism, Australia isn’t the one that comes to my mind. So, what’s the justification behind all of this?

Some combination of "the children!!" And while we aren't the centre of terrorism, that doesn't stop the "encryption promotes terrorism" idea that so many ill informed people seem to have.

sounds like most of the "hacks" are actually employees getting phished.

Something which happens everyday.

In $currentyear, I don't see how even the most tech illiterate employees can't get lessons in phishing prevention along with having sysadmins who are ahead of the curve.

Getting reasonable levels of protection isn't hard to achieve, but they are hard to justify the cost of to execs.

phishing us (probably) by far #1 reason for data breaches

Why? it’s very plausible the attack is exploiting an unpatched exchange owa or whatever. Or trying to login as an employee using password only

>> Use 2fa

Even better: use u2f

My money is on the "state-based actor" turning out to be a teenager in his bedroom.

What is the motivation behind this announcement?

Considering that it is a generic ‘we are under attack’.

The Prime Minister doesn’t usually hold press conferences like this unless there is a good reason.

You would hope the ACSC has been working furiously behind the scenes before anything got announced.

There's nothing sophisticated whatsoever about these attacks, it's quite strange to make a vague political announcement where everyone jumps to their own conclusions.

I think people jumping to conclusions is by design. In the context of the trade spat that is going on between Aus and China, "We're not saying it's China, but it's China"

Australian unemployment is essentially at 11% and youth unemployment is >25%. Both are going to trend higher this next quarter. I think it's a distraction from the poor handling of the recession. It's been pretty standard tack to ring the national security bell when ever there is a speed wobble from the government. This will grab the news for the day so they can end the parliamentary week without the weekend news being about everyone lack of a job.

I can't really see any 4d chess moves from the Australian Government here.

> I can't really see any 4d chess moves from the Australian Government here.

Or ever, at least from any of the parties we have contending for power right now... But "how good is coal?" :sigh:

(I assume you're the Gonzo who's sharpening up a nice knife for this weekend? ;-) )

> What is the motivation behind this announcement?

Justifying spending millions of dollars on more bureaucracy .

Perhaps it’s a way to say stop it or we go public ? Perhaps it’s to get some news time as a statesman leader ;)

There is an ongoing dispute between Australia and China and the motivation is most likely to drum up support for how the government is dealing with China (not explicitly blaming China is in fact loudly yelling IT WAS CHINA to anyone following the current narrative). There is also a chance it is to start blaming others for the shoddy National Broadband Network that the ruling party is responsible for and might be becoming a bigger issue with COVID-19 making more people aware of the problems, due to work and schools needing teleconferencing, and streaming services lowering quality to cope with the load.

The Aus Government has a good guide called the "Essential Eight" for reducing risk. It's a good starting point for businesses, and is pretty much universal advice, not just applicable to government departments: https://www.cyber.gov.au/publications/essential-eight-explai...

My take on the E8: https://blog.congruentlabs.co/essential-eight-essentially/

Is it possible it is being made as “breaking news” as support for any other narrative? Just saw on BBC breaking news

> Regrettably, this activity is not new. Frequency has been increasing.”

I'd wait til 5:30pm. It's possible they might be using this to cover another last-minute-friday announcement.

Let me take a total shot in the dark. The country responsible starts with a C and ends with a A.

But Canada is just cold Australia, why would they want to hurt us?!

They scream cyber attack every time any of their services see a small uptick in usage, like the social services website Centrelink did, when the lockdown/ job losses started. I'm going to assume it's incompetence on their side, for now.

EDIT: 95,000 users is all it took, apparently: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/minister-backflips-on-mygov-d...

Some further information here: https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy-past...

Or... China is actually up-happy about people pointing out it's use of disinformation and economic coercion amidst COVID-19.

Looking into it more, ACSC has posted a serious advisory [0], so it might be real this time. It's not a good look when the government screams cyber attack willy nilly though, because people get jaded, and think it's rather their own incompetence, again.

[0] https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/advisory-2020-008-copy-past...

That maybe true but joking that Canada may be behind this when China is well known for this type of behavior is disingenuous.

I didn't think most people would take my suggestion of Canada seriously. Obviously if it is actually a nation state, there's about a 90% chance it's China, considering all the statements they've put out regarding oz and the government recently.

If you didn't laugh out loud at that, you clearly do not know many Australians (or probably Canadians either...)

Oath! I didn't want to assume where they were from, but it's definitely not Australia haha. Canadians go alright, but they're dangerously close to USA

Incompetence would be a pretty safe bet given the track record of the current government I would think.

Well you know Canada and their shenanigans

I always found Cambodia suspect!

Meh, everyone knows the real gangsta are in Caledonia.

I don't understand why Canada would want to do this.

Technically, Catalonia is still a part of Spain, but I appreciate you recognizing their sovereignty!

I guess sentencing an Australian citizen to death wasn’t enough retaliation.

I think this is Australia's response to that.

There is nothing new in the announcement, it's a many months old incident in a decade long Chinese cyber breaches.

It's announced today in what seems like a weak volley back in the reshuffle of trade with China post C19.

I wonder if we'll ever see letters of marque for cyber offense. It feels a bit like it's already the de facto situation in some countries because they just don't investigate.

Anyone taking responsibility for inadequate defences?

Adequate by what measure? Best practices? Regulatory compliance? Are there ever adequate defenses in cybersecurity?

From the Australian Signals Directorate advisory:

> The title ‘Copy-paste compromises’ is derived from the actor’s heavy use of proof-of-concept exploit code, web shells and other tools copied almost identically from open source.

Surely adequate can fit into defending against common open source toolkits?

A quote from the PM "“We know it is a sophisticated, state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the tradecraft used".

I didn't see open source toolkit mentioned in the article.

Hmm, a "sophisticated state actor" or a copy-paste script kiddy? Which one was it?

Copy-paste and open source was enough to get into the Australian Parliament, apparently our pollies simply can't resist the allure of larger penises and wealthy Nigerians in trouble.

Or maybe, just maybe, there is just the slightest possibility that this is all just a manufactured distraction from other issues...

These are the nincompoops who passed a law to backdoor everyone's encryption and nuke their own country's IT industry from orbit with a law that nobody wanted. What a surprise that they can't keep their own data secure.

> Hmm, a "sophisticated state actor" or a copy-paste script kiddy? Which one was it?

There's no contradiction between those two things.

You think you can withstand an attack from a nation-state actor?

That's pretty brave. What's your IP address?

>Government sources say China is behind the attack and Mr Morrison refused to shut down speculation that the nation was the “sophisticated state-based actor” behind the attack. Refusing to name the foreign entity, the Prime Minister stressed investigations were continuing by the Defence Signals Directorate and law enforcement agencies.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/cyber-att...

>9News political editor Chris Uhlmann said China was behind the attack.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/cyber-attack-australia-sco...

Aren't they the ones who passed an anti-encryption law? Gee, imagine thinking they care about security, they never seemed to care about it before with all the breaches and attacks which hit on a regular basis.

North Korea raising its head from the sand now that Kim recovered from his mystery illness.

Seriously, which one of you is doing this?

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