Australia: Parliament and Parties hacked

Prime Minister Scott Morrison reports that the governing Liberal Party of Australia and the governing National Party of Australia as well as the strongest opposition party, Labor Party were the target of an cyber attack on Parliament’s server. It is assumed that the server was attacked by a foreign government. Not affected by the breach were the ministers an their offices because they operate on different computer servers.

The attack was discovered on the 8th of February 2019 during an investigation of a breach of Parliament House’s computer. According to the statement of the nation’s chief cyber security adviser, Alistair MacGibbon, who is the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, it is too early to tell whether and what information the hackers had accessed.

At the moment, election influences of the upcoming nationwide elections can be excluded.

As a first measure the security agency reset passwords after detecting the breach so that the politicians and their staff lost access to their emails.