Nation-state actors cracked critical Australian infrastructure to ‘cripple it at a time of their choosing’

Australia’s Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has established dedicated teams to counter nation-state attacks on critical infrastructure, the org’s director general Mike Burgess revealed yesterday.

“We discovered nation-state hackers had compromised the network of an Australian critical infrastructure provider,” Burgess said yesterday in remarks accompanying the release of ASIO’s annual threat assessment, a task it performs in its role as Australia’s equivalent to the FBI and MI5.

“ASIO assessed the hackers were preparing for sabotage. They weren’t planting ‘digital dynamite’ as such; they were mapping out the network and maintaining access so they could cripple it at a time of their choosing.”

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