PM says major parties caught up in likely cyber attack on Australia's Parliament

Krusty · Feb 17, 2019

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said the computer servers of Australia's major political parties were hit by a recent cyber attack.

He updated the House of Representatives on the issue this morning, saying there was no evidence of electoral interference.

Mr Morrison said the nation's cyber security agencies believed a "sophisticated state actor" was behind the attacks.

The impact to political parties was uncovered during an investigation of a breach of Parliament House's computer servers earlier this month.

More to come.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-18/prime-minister-scott-morrison-cyber-attack-hackers/10821170

Krusty · Feb 18, 2019

After the Parliament cybersecurity breach, MPs and senators should be looking closer to home

Who was responsible for the attack? What did they find? We don't know.

But as important as these questions are, there is an equally pressing point here.

Do we really believe whoever was behind the attack stopped at targeting parliaments and parties?

If I were a nation-state hacker, you can bet I'd be going after every politician and staffer's poorly secured personal network I could find — which could be most of them.

And in an era of smart devices, it's never been easier for our politicians to open up their homes and offices to eavesdroppers.
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Krusty · Feb 19, 2019

The cyber attack on Parliament was done by a 'state actor' — here's how experts figure that out

How can you tell what's a 'state actor' and what's not?
While specific details of the Parliament attack are not known, there are a range of factors that help determine whether an attack is being carried out by a foreign government or a lone wolf sitting in an internet cafe.

Cybersecurity expert Andrew Woodward from Edith Cowan University, who has been in the industry for 20 years, said you could tell a lot from basic monitoring and logging of internet traffic.

"You can look at the all the traffic coming in and you can use a lot of visualisation tools — your big graphical displays, those kind of things — and if you look at that traffic, it's easy to tell the difference between a room or a building full of people coming after you as opposed to a single entity," Professor Woodward said.

"A single entity can control a botnet or group of PCs, but the level of sophistication in terms of the type of traffic, volume of traffic, types of attacks and systems they're going after… you generally get a feel for what is a lone actor as opposed to what is a dedicated large group from a well-resourced organisation or nation coming after you."

Debi Ashenden, Professor of Cyber Security at Deakin University, agreed the sophistication of the attack and the resources behind it were good "starting indicators" as to whether it was a state actor or not.

"Are they using methods that would be costly to implement and how clear are they at what they're doing?" she questioned.

In the case of the Parliament House hack, the Federal Government has not revealed which nation they believed launched the attack.

Professor Ashenden said such attribution was "something that no country is going to do lightly".

"You have to have robust evidence to be able to do that," she said.
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guest · Feb 26, 2019

The Arsenal Behind the Australian Parliament Hack
February 26, 2019
https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/81677/malware/australian-parliament-hack-malware.html

Cybaze-Yoroi ZLab investigated artefacts behind Australian Parliament attack to have an insight of Tools and Capabilities associated with the attackers.
The first technical insight points to sophisticates state-sponsored threat actors operating in the Pacific region, but no official statement has been published and the speculation that China was behind the attack is not confirmed in any way. [...]
Conclusion
The analyzed samples show the attackers choose a multi-modular approach for the development of their cyber-arsenal, realizing a complex implant leveraging an ecosystem of libraries providing proper functionalities to conduct advanced, and offensive, cyber operations.

Despite these functions and libraries does not appear to contain any zero-day exploit or techniques, the detection of these modules within a high value perimeter such as the Australian Parliament provides important indication on cyber arsenal development strategies of this threat actor, revealing the abuse and the customization of open-source PenTest tools [...]
Showing also, how these supposedly “known” techniques and tools can be easily repackaged in evasive and silent implants, capable to bypass the traditional kinds of security boundaries.
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guest · Mar 1, 2019

Iridium cyberespionage gang behind Aussie parliament attacks
Parliament Races – Cyberespionage Groups Are Targeting Political Elite
February 28, 2019
https://resecurity.com/blog/parliament_races/

Resecurity’s research indicates that the attack on Parliament is a part of a multi-year cyberespionage campaign orchestrated by a nation-state actor whom we are calling IRIDIUM.

It is particularly focused on political leaders, political parties and government officials, from whom IRIDIUM may acquire strategic intelligence about global international affairs, including sensitive information about trade, military and diplomatic relations with the Middle East (Israel, in particular). [...]
Summary
– Cyberespionage activity has increased significantly, and we anticipate that it will continue to grow. The described incidents with the U.K. and Australian Parliaments may be characterized as two connected episodes of “state-encouraged” or “state-sponsored” cyber espionage taking place and around each other.
– The multi-stage cyber attacks conducted by IRIDIUM are extremely effective as demonstrated by the group through a well-organized reconnaissance tradecraft.
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guest · Sep 15, 2019

Exclusive: Australia concluded China was behind hack on parliament, political parties – sources
September 15, 2019
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ament-political-parties-sources-idUSKBN1W00VF

Australian intelligence determined China was responsible for a cyber-attack on its national parliament and three largest political parties before the general election in May, five people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The five sources declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. Reuters has not reviewed the classified report.

The report, which also included input from the Department of Foreign Affairs, recommended keeping the findings secret in order to avoid disrupting trade relations with Beijing, two of the people said. The Australian government has not disclosed who it believes was behind the attack or any details of the report.
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PM says major parties caught up in likely cyber attack on Australia's Parliament

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