{"id":32301,"date":"2019-02-08T06:23:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T06:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32301"},"modified":"2019-02-08T06:23:26","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T06:23:26","slug":"australia-says-parliaments-computer-network-breached","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32301","title":{"rendered":"Australia says parliament&#8217;s computer network breached"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"115.326522272\">\n<p class=\"speakable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/australia.html\">Australia<\/a>&#8216;s federal parliament says it has launched an investigation after its computer network was compromised by an unspecified &#8220;security incident&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">In a statement on Friday, parliamentary authorities said they had taken &#8220;a number of measures&#8221; to protect the network and its users.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">There was no official comment on the nature of the cyber security breach, but the statement said there was no initial proof that data had been accessed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have no evidence that this is an attempt to influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our immediate focus has been on securing the network and protecting data and users.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The breach forced parliamentarians and staff members to reset their computer passwords as a precaution.<\/p>\n<h2>Sophisticated actors involved?<\/h2>\n<p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had been briefed on the matter, adding: &#8220;There is no suggestion that government departments or agencies have been the target of any such incursion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) confirmed it was working with the parliament in response to the breach, a move that indicates that sophisticated actors may be involved.<\/p>\n<p>National broadcaster ABC reported intelligence agencies were looking into whether a foreign government could be behind the attack.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To undertake such an attack, you need some big resources, so a state actor is most likely,&#8221; James Der Derian, director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. told Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You have to look and see who has a grievance against Australia, and the most obvious suspects would be China and Russia.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In December, officials in the United States and Britain said businesses and government agencies in the two countries and at least 10 others &#8211; which did not include Australia &#8211; were the victims of a massive data theft carried out by state-sponsored Chinese hackers.<\/p>\n<p>Beijing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/12\/china-rejects-economic-espionage-accusations-allies-181221010142830.html\">has denied the accusations<\/a>, saying they are &#8220;deliberate defamation&#8221; pulled &#8220;out of thin air.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Media reports this week said Australia rescinded the visa of a prominent Chinese businessman just a few months after barring Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies from supplying equipment to its 5G broadband network.<\/p>\n<p>Australia&#8217;s ties with Russia ,meanwhile, soured after the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, brought down by a Russian surface-to-air missile. Moscow has denied involvement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australia&#8217;s federal parliament says it has launched an investigation after its computer network was compromised by an unspecified &#8220;security incident&#8221;. In a statement on Friday, parliamentary authorities said they had taken &#8220;a number of measures&#8221; to protect the network and its users. There was no official comment on the nature of the cyber security breach,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}