Antinuclear

ASIO urges govt to tighten security on Internet servers

 cyber-risk that worries agencies is the emergence of anarchic
non-state organisations motivated to dislocate our way of life to
express dissent about public decisions. The most high-profile example
is Anonymous, a cellular and leaderless group of hactivists.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has referred the proposals to the
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. She
recognises that a signal issue remains – “whether the government needs
to obligate the telecommunications industry to protect their networks
from unauthorised interference”.

It’s global cyber war out there, Financial Review, Christopher Joye, 1
Jan 13, “……with the privatisation
of so many utilities over the past three decades, government has
unwittingly delegated national security to business. …..ASIO
believes national security reforms need to be made to the regulations
governing essential infrastructure, including telecommunications…..

ASIO’s new cyber security unit has monitored with mounting alarm the
emergence of avowedly anarchic, non-state actors like Anonymous, which
have targeted Western nations and companies with disruptive attacks
that foreshadow an apocalyptic fusion between cyber-capabilities and
terrorism……
Irvine believes the multiplicity of unprecedented and underappreciated
risks is every bit as complex and consequential as those tackled by
his predecessors.

“Electronic intelligence gathering is being used against Australia on
a massive scale to extract confidential information from governments,
the private sector and ordinary individuals,” he says……

the US reserves the right to pre-emptively cauterise cyber menaces
with force and/or through its arsenal of digital weapons, which have
been privately listed for the first time…..

To help safeguard domestic assets against unremitting
cyber-offensives, ASIO is championing data retention laws requiring
communications suppliers to store basic information, such as the type,
time, duration, and identifiers of parties to the exchange, for at
least two years. ASIO’s concern is this data, which is the minimum it
says it needs to adequately investigate threats, is being discarded by
second-tier communications companies, like small ISPs…..

Australia’s electronic spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate,
(DSD)  is Australia’s equivalent to America’s National Security
Agency( NSA)  and has no qualms advertising its twin missions: “One is
collecting foreign intelligence by interception. The other is working
to stop people doing the same to us,” Burgess says….. The ordinarily
shadowy DSD has published a detailed study on its top 35 cyber
“mitigation strategies”.

While guarding Australia from digital enemies DSD also hacks into
foreign sites. A final objective is preparing for “offensive” cyber
warfare. Burgess puts it bluntly: “In the cyber safari, DSD is the
poacher and the gamekeeper.”…..

OPERATION AUSTRALIA

There are a range of cyber-menaces that keep Australia’s spooks awake
at night. The first is the usual state-on-state espionage. When
officials refer to the “big C”, they are not talking about cancer.

Notwithstanding rhetoric from businesses keen to promote prosperous
relations with the Middle Kingdom, the national security community
says China is responsible for cyberthefts of Australian assets at
every imaginable level…..   the most popular targets are resources
companies, defence contractors, lawyers serving as clearing-houses for
confidential information and technology firms.

A final cyber-risk that worries agencies is the emergence of anarchic
non-state organisations motivated to dislocate our way of life to
express dissent about public decisions. The most high-profile example
is Anonymous, a cellular and leaderless group of hactivists.

Under Operation Australia, which has protested new data retention
proposals, Anonymous shut down more than 10 Australian government
sites, including ASIO’s, in July last year using denial of service
attacks.

It also executed a devastating hack of AAPT’s servers, which resulted
in 236,000 phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, user names
and passwords being stolen…..

Two months ago, Anonymous penetrated Australian Defence Force Academy
databases and released the names, rank, dates of birth, and passwords
of up to 1900 ADFA staff and 10,000 students. “The danger is that such
attacks by malicious individuals could have significant impacts if our
telecommunications networks are impeded leading to failures in other
areas of essential services” Irvine says.

ASIO advocates reforms to communications and privacy laws to provide
basic cyber-insurance.

Irvine argues that “the ability of the private sector and governments
to protect the personal information of their customers and clients in
accordance with modern privacy laws is called into question by the
apparent ease with which hackers have been able to break into data
banks around the world”.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has referred the proposals to the
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. She
recognises that a signal issue remains – “whether the government needs
to obligate the telecommunications industry to protect their networks
from unauthorised interference”.
http://afr.com/f/free/national/it_global_cyber_war_out_there_94da3CY7Avufi9jp5d0JTI

January 7, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies