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 “that a sophisticated state actor is responsible” and that the Government has “put in place a number of measures to ensure the integrity of our electoral system.”
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 “working closely” with cybersecurity agencies regarding the breach.
Alistair MacGibbon, Australia’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 “sophistication of their methodology” meant that there were “a limited number of countries” that could have been responsible but that the Government had “low confidence” 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 “risk management”.
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.