Pierluigi Paganini February 08, 2019

Australia’s parliament confirmed that is investigating a suspicious security incident that affected its computer network.

Australia announced an ongoing investigation on unspecified ‘security incident’ in the federal parliament’s computer network.

“Following a security incident on the parliamentary computing network, a number of measures have been implemented to protect the network and its users,” parliamentary authorities said in a statement.

At the time of writing, authorities did not provide technical details on the security breach, officials said there was no initial evidence that data had been compromised by threat actors.

Representatives from Australia’s Parliament did not release any statement on the attribution of the attack, but clearly, such kind of operations are usually associated with activities of nation-state actors.

“We have no evidence that this is an attempt to influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes,” a statement said.

“Our immediate focus has been on securing the network and protecting data and users.”

In response to the incident, the IT staff reset passwords for all parliamentary

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) is also investigating the incident, according to the Australian broadcaster ABC intelligence agencies suspect the involvement of state-sponsored hackers.

“ASD and its Australian Cyber Security Centre will continue to work with (Parliament) to understand the full extent of this network compromise,” and ASD spokesperson told AFP.

“Meanwhile, the necessary steps are being taken to mitigate the compromise and prevent any harm.”

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Australia’s Parliament)

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