A VERY advanced state-sponsored cyber attack is targeting the Australian government and has Deja-Vu type traits of the same cyber attack earlier this week in the US, Your Content has learned.
Just like in the United States, the cyber attack is aimed at businesses, education sectors and political organizations according to the Australian Prime Minister, while he failed to specifically name the culprits or state actors responsible.
“Based on advice provided to me by our cyber experts, Australian organizations are currently being targeted by a sophisticated state-based cyber actor. This act is targeting Australian organizations across a range of sectors including all levels of government, industry, political organizations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure.”
Scott Morrison, Australian PRime Minister
The Australian PM also suggests the attacks have been gearing up for months, aligning with the time that coronavirus started dominating world headlines. This timeline also synchronizes with cyber warnings and alerts from DOJ, DHS and specifically the program responsible for cyber awareness under the virtual arm of Homeland Security which is CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team).
While many American’s this week were left without access to social media, banking, cellular service and gaming; the attacks also affected more critical essential services for providers, first responders and healthcare workers. The critical infrastructure we rely on depends on the reliability of the internet, that reliability or high-availability underscores the need to secure our infrastructure so that interruption is next to impossible.
The Australian government also recommended that all private entities and businesses take extra measures to secure and fortify their IT infrastructure, this is good advice as companies like Google move to remove malicious software and plugins that steal sensitive user data from their app store.
Many users across social media including Anonymous have been referring to the downtime and cyber anomalies as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), however YOUR CONTENT was the first to report that DDoS would be unlikely as the broad scope and wide breadth of those affected would rule that kind of attack out. Security experts and the Australian PM indicate this attack is very sophisticated, which would imply it’s BGP or DNS hijcaking method or worse.
What is different about these attacks, is that breaches or cyber attacks usually have an underlying financial purpose; meaning the days of defacing a website or irritating (DDoS) the victim is rare these days, the objective for hacking is usually monetary benefit. What makes this attack look like China or another state backed sponsor, is both the timing and precarious way the attacks are being carried out.