The Prime Minister’s reluctance to focus on the most important things is understandable, but the curious way in which he presented the threat has raised questions
It was a moment of farce just hours after a sombre-sounding Australian prime minister delivered the grim news that a wide range of the nation’s public and private sector organisations “are currently being targeted by a sophisticated state-based cyber actor”.
What did the hounds know, what did Scott Morrison mean about “currently” suffering these attacks?
“I mean now, ” replied Morrison dryly.
Pressed on the fact there were headlines reflecting the interpretation Australia was under cyber-attack right now, Morrison observed that the government “doesn’t write the headlines” – which technically is correct, even though it was his announcement in Parliament House’s “Blue Room” on Friday that sparked those very headlines.
Journalists who amassed on the Snowy 2.0 assignment site later in the morning for The scheduled press conference of Morrison, the original best friend, persisted; They shaped the prime minister in a high-visibility vest that they were only looking for one country explained because there was anxiety about the announcement.
Too perfectly, the Prime Minister’s official transcription recorded his response to the last query as “[inaudible]”, given the presser’s noisy opescore backgcircular earth movement apparatus. (For the most purpose, he said his concept was “very clear” in his statements beyond.)
In a sense, Morrison’s reluctance to concentrate on the main things is understandable, given the sensitivities involved. But the curious way in which this threat of lacheck was presented to national security posed a string of supplementary questions, as the Prime Minister noted that the frequency of malicious activities was higher “by masses of months” and was an additional cause of surveillance, but it did not use the word “unprecedented”. Aleven, though considered critical enough to cause a press conference early in the morning, “it was not surprising” that such threats were resolved in today’s world.
They didn’t tell us when those specific intrusions started and when Morrison first reported.
At the very least, Morrison’s decisive decision to make it public has helped to draw attention to the recommendation recently issued through the Australian Cyber Security Centre under the day-to-day jobs that companies and organizations are circulating through the country to reduce the threat of security breaches.
The centre noted that because all of the exploits used by the attacker had patches or mitigations already available, it was a reminder to organisations to ensure their systems were kept up to date with any fixes promptly installed. And it reaffirmed the essential advice that multi-factor authentication should be switched on across all remote-access services. As my colleague Josh Taylor notes, this is basic cyber hygiene.
The wake-up call is timely: while government and army systems are in a maximum position, probably to have strict defenses, Australian security agencies are very familiar with potential weaknesses in companies, universities and other organizations that have tons of facts valuable to a hostile. . Intelligence service.
But some observers well-versed in security matters think there is something else going on here, and that the truly intended audience was overseas. Note how Morrison indicated the “malicious” intrusions were carried out “by a state-based actor with very, very significant capabilities” and “there are not a large number of state-based actors that can engage in this type of activity”.
Peter Jennings, head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior defense official, says he believes the executive is publicly raising the difficulty without braringly naming the main suspect, China, sending a signal to Beijing to moderate his habit after recent diplomatic tensions.
“I think what’s happening here is that we’re looking to apply some presbound to China after it was imposed on us. But there may also be a point in Morrison’s technique that announces China: “Look, I don’t call you “Maybe the opinion is ‘if you started playing a little better with us, chances are we won’t.'”
As far as it is, Jennings believes that this genuine check-and-influence in China has the option of “almaximum no” of success. But his perspectives on government thinking are backed by former Office of National Intelligence analyst Ben Scott. Writing for the Lowy Institute interpreter, Scott points out that Australia, like the great apple nations, is suffering from controlling the upcoming cyberbullying-based rivalry and is a way to “deter the warring parties without provoking them.”
This is consistent with some of Morrison’s last words in the blue room. He didn’t worry the Australians, he insisted, even to reassure them that the agencies understood what was happening and would continue to defend themselves. “We know this is happening. We’re chasing.”
In other words, the message for domestic intake is: calm and continuity (and, for that matter, more questions).