According to the Guardian newgroup, Morrison spoke about the depth and nature of the recent cyber attacks at a media conference in Australia’s capital city of Canberra (Hurst, 2020). He stated that, “malicious cyber-activity was ‘increasing in frequency, scale, in sophistication and its impact” (Hurst, 2020). Presently, Australia’s government has not attributed the attack to any specific actors. However, Morrison stated that the attacker is, “a state-based actor, with very significant capabilities […] because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the tradecraft used” (Hurst, 2020). The Prime Minister went on to say that targets ranged from, “all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure” (Hurst, 2020).
In terms of technical details, the Guardian quotes Australia’s Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) as stating the technique used in the attacks as “copy-paste compromises” (Hurst, 2020). What this means is that, in the attacker’s goals of compromising public-facing infrastructure, they copied heavily from open source code (Hurst, 2020). However, the Guardian article also reported that those attacks failed, so the actor(s) moved on to spear phishing. The Prime Minister also stated that the frequency of attacks has increased, “over many months,” and investigations have not revealed any “large-scale personal data breaches” (Hurst, 2020).
Although “sophisticated state-based actors” could mean a number of nations, many experts and reports are naming China as a strong potential culprit. The reason for this comes from the fact that tensions between Australia and China have risen significantly due to Covid-19 (Hurst & Kuo, 2020). The short version is that Australia’s “vocal and early calls for an independent inquiry into the origins and handling of Covid-19,” had angered the Chinese government to the point that they imposed trade tariffs against Australia and warned students/tourists that they would be met with racism within the country (Hurst & Kuo, 2020). In light of this warning, Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, characterized it as “disinformation” (Hurst & Kuo, 2020). In response, the Chinese government criticized the Australian government, accused them of shifting attention away from victims, and slandering the country (Hurst & Kuo, 2020).
Finally, while Australian trade minister, Simon Birmingham, does not want to compromise on his country’s values or policies, he passionately seeks to rebuild trade relations with China. According to the Guardian, Birmingham voiced his frustrations about not being able to speak to his Chinese trade counterpart for over a month, stated that Australia is “ready to talk,” and also appealed to China in order to, “[…]realize the mutual benefits of trade with Australia” (Hurst & Kuo, 2020). Lastly, Birmingham also stated that, “an inward-looking Australia ‘would be a smaller, poorer Australia’” (Hurst & Kuo, 2020)