Scott Morrison confirms foreign state hacked Parliament servers

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed suspicions that a foreign government carried out a recent cyber-attack on parliamentary computer servers.

He said that investigators believed ā€œthat a sophisticated state actor is responsibleā€ and that the Government has ā€œput in place a number of measures to ensure the integrity of our electoral system.ā€

However, the Prime Minister stressed that an investigation has not uncovered any evidence of interference in electoral processes.

A Liberal Party spokesperson said that they were ā€œworking closelyā€ with cybersecurity agencies regarding the breach.

Alistair MacGibbon, Australiaā€™s chief adviser on cyber security, has said that it is still too early to know what information has been compromised by the hack.

However, Mr MacGibbon said that the ā€œsophistication of their methodologyā€ meant that there were ā€œa limited number of countriesā€ that could have been responsible but that the Government had ā€œlow confidenceā€ in laying blame on any particular nation.

He said that the decision to go public with news of the breach before all information was known was a good step for the purposes of ā€œrisk managementā€.

Parliament members and their support staff lost access to email accounts, with security agents resetting passwords as a precaution shortly after the attack was detected.

There is a strong suspicion that China was behind the attack as the nation has been blamed for previous cyber-attacks in Australia.

Christian Woods
Christian Woods
Christian is a morning reporter and technology columnist for Best in Australia. Christian has worked in the media since 2000, in a range of locations. He joined Best in Australia in 2018, and began working in Melbourne in 2019.
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