Two mysterious cyber attacks have hit Australia on Sunday: one against the government, and the other against Nine Entertainment Co., one of Australia’s biggest media companies.
News.com.au reports that on Sunday, the Department of Parliamentary Services began investigating a mass outage of email, calendar and contacts services in Parliament House.
While no official explanation has been given yet, government sources have told the website that there are fears the outage may have been an attack from a foreign government.
Now the Australian Cyber Security Centre is involved, which is basically the government’s top agency for defending against cyber attacks.
“DPS is also working to investigate the cause of the disruption and the Australian Cyber Security Centre is providing advice as part of that process,” a spokesperson for the Department of Parliamentary Services said in a statement.
“DPS is working to resolve the issues and some services have been restored.”
Meanwhile, Nine – which not only owns Channel 9, but also newspapers, radio stations and even websites like PEDESTRIAN.TV – was hit by a cyber attack which affected live broadcasting capabilities, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
The attack meant shows like Weekend Today weren’t able to go to air on Sunday morning and had to be replaced by prerecorded shows for a brief moment. Thankfully, solutions were found in time for the NRL in the afternoon.
Later in the evening, Nine News had to do things the old fashioned way, whiteboard and all.
A remarkable effort by many many incredible minds to get @9NewsAUS to air tonight after the network was hacked. Here’s our rundown… old school. pic.twitter.com/u2kS8Om7be
— Lauren Tomasi (@LaurenTomasi) March 28, 2021
Like Parliament House, Nine was also offered assistance by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie, who is also chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, said the two attacks should be a wake-up call to anyone who doesn’t take cybersecurity seriously.
“This is a timely reminder that Australians cannot be complacent about their cyber security. Cyber security is a team effort and a shared responsibility,” he said.
“It is vital that Australian businesses and organisations are alert to threats and take the necessary steps to ensure our digital sovereignty.”
