Australia reports being targeted by state hacker cyber-attacks

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison reported Friday that various sectors, including the government, are dealing with advanced cyber attacks that another state is said to be behind.

The attacks target all levels of Australian government, industry, political organisations, education, healthcare, service providers and operators of critical infrastructure, among others. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a statement on Friday.

The Australian Cyber ​​Security Center would assign the attacks to a state, due to the size and nature of the attacks, and the targets chosen. Morrison said in a statement that only a few states qualify, without naming names. In general, Western powers point to China, North Korea and Russia in particular in claims of attacks by state hackers.

The reason that the Australian government is issuing the report is that the frequency of the attacks would increase. Attacks by state hackers have been going on for much longer. Morrison wants to create awareness with the warning so that organizations increase their security.

The advice of the Australian Cyber ​​Security Center shows that recent attacks initially targeted vulnerable versions of Telerik UI, Microsoft Internet Information Services, Sharepoint and Citrix. When this was unsuccessful, the attackers turned to spearphising techniques, in which targeted attacks using, for example, emails with links are used to penetrate networks.