Australia under cyber attack by 'state-based actor', says PM Scott Morrison

Australia was hit by a massive cyber attack on Thursday which targeted some govenment as well as private sectors. Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed deatils about the attacks on Friday morning in a press conference, calling it the work of a a state-based actor.

"This act is targeting Australian organisations across a range of sectors including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure," Morrison said, adding, "There aren't too many state-based actors who have those capabilities."

The Australian Cyber Security Centre is probing the attack and has been working with the organisations subject to the malicious cyber attack.

It said that the cyber attack posted links to fake websites which would steal users' details, also links to malicious files were shared, and use of email tracking services to identify when users were opening emails were used in the cyberattack.

"The actor has been identified leveraging a number of initial access vectors, with the most prevalent being the exploitation of public-facing infrastructure," the Australian Signals Directorate said.

Morrison has sought the co-operation of Australia's Five Eyes intelligence partners, which includes the United States, Canada, New Zealand and UK.

The Prime Minister said that the intrusions on Australia`s cyber network were "not new but frequency has been increasing".

The Australian government has seen an increase in cyber threat activity in the recent months in a trend that has overlapped with Australia's tensions with the Chinese government over an investigation into the source of the COVID-19 virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan.