
Networks of major Australian political parties affected by cyber attack - Maxious
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2019/feb/18/morrison-shorten-coalition-labor-budget-politics-live
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A2017U1
Convenient timing considering the biggest state and federal election are
coming within 2 months.

It's also a bit rich from a Parliament which only had recently voted to water
down cybersecurity in Australia and throw the tech industry under a bus so
they could pretend to be tough on crime when it's more about outing political
leaks and whistleblowers.

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sandov
I think you meant this link?: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/feb/18/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/feb/18/australia-political-parties-hacked-sophisticated-state-actor)

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samspenc
I really wish they would name the 'sophisticated state actor', I don't
understand why they don't make that part public. I'm guessing it's either
Russia or China, but I still wish they would name the state actor.

~~~
senectus1
you think thats frustrating?

We (the business I work for) had ASIO come around, indicate that they should
be meeting with top level execs, then claim in that meeting that they are
aware that an external sovereign actor has hacked our network and is inside
stealing our data etc.

They then refused to answer _any_ questions about how they know this, when it
happened, where it happened, how long they've known or anything AT ALL useful
or precise or accurate about how we could protect ourselves.

All it did was cause rampant distrust in every direction.

I have a very low opinion of these bastards and deeply suspect them of sewing
FUD deliberately in businesses.

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jamhan
I wonder if this is linked to the case of Huang Xiangmo, who spit the dummy
after his residency visa was revoked:

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/feb/12/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-
news/2019/feb/12/australia-is-a-giant-baby-banned-billionaire-huang-xiangmo-
says)

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brokenmachine
We'd hate to leave you unprotected over Christmas, so we're going to pass
these crazy laws to secretly hack all your machines, for security! You can
have complete trust in us, we're the government!

Ooops, our pants fell down again!

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manicdee
Curious that the announcement came from the PM and not the Minister for Home
Affairs.

~~~
jddj
Yeah, right?

Maybe they lost the specifics of that pesky Paladin contract as collateral
damage from the hackers' actions.

