Australia is said to be the target of a massive cyber attack. A large number of institutions have been the target for several months of hacking attempts on the part of a "sophisticated state actor" who recently intensified his attacks, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday 19 June.

"We know this is hacking from a sophisticated state actor given the scale and nature of the targets" - government institutions, political organizations, essential service providers and operators of essential infrastructure - said Scott Morrison at a press briefing in Canberra.

Few States capable of such attacks

Without incriminating a country by name, the Australian Prime Minister clarified that the States likely to launch such attacks were not very numerous.

According to local media, the list of suspects with expertise in this area is reduced, outside Western countries, to China, North Korea, Iran, Israel and Russia. The media are suspicious of China, which in May imposed punitive tariffs on certain Australian exports.

Morrison's government had angered Beijing by calling for an independent international investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, and by denouncing aggressive and dishonest Chinese diplomacy.

China responded by discouraging its nationals from Australia as a destination for tourism and study, threatening further reprisals and sentencing an Australian to death for drug trafficking.

No massive data leaks

Australian Defense Minister Linda Reynolds said there were no massive data breaches as a result of these attacks and urged companies and organizations to keep their IT protection systems up to date .

The head of the Australian cyber intelligence agency stressed that the analyzes carried out so far have not revealed any attempts to destroy or disturb them after the intrusions into the networks of the targets.

With Reuters and AFP

The France 24 week summary invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 app

google-play-badge_FR