Australia is the target of a vast cyber attack by a “state actor” targeting government, administration and business IT systems, the Australian Prime Minister announced today in Canberra.
“Australian organizations are currently being targeted by a sophisticated state actor,” said Scott Morrison, at a last-minute press conference to warn citizens of the “specific risks” to which they are exposed.
The cyber attack is hitting “Australian organizations in different sectors, at all levels of government, the economy, political organizations, health services and other strategic infrastructure operators,” he stressed.
Without providing technical details or identifying the “state actor” responsible for the cyber attack, Morrison indicated that Australians’ personal data had not been stolen and many attacks had failed.
“We encourage organizations, especially health care, strategic infrastructure and essential services to call on experts to install technical defense systems,” he said.
According to the Australian media, cited by the France-Presse news agency, the list of suspects, excluding Western countries, is very short: China, North Korea, Iran, Israel and Russia.
The Morrison government unleashed Beijing’s cholera by calling for an independent international inquiry into the origin of the new coronavirus pandemic and by denouncing an aggressive and dishonest Chinese diplomacy.
For its part, China advised its citizens against choosing Australia as a tourist and study destination, threatened Canberra with other reprisals and sentenced an Australian to death for drug trafficking.
