Australia joins US and UK in blaming Russian-backed hackers for cyber-attack

Australia has joined the US and UK in publicly blaming Russia for a “malicious” global cyber-attack last year. The attack appeared to be an attempt at espionage, stealing intellectual property and laying the foundation for a future attack on infrastructure.

Australia joined a coordinated announcement sheeting the blame home to Russian state-sponsored actors. The US and the UK held rare coordinated conference calls on Monday to reveal their findings on the malicious activity identified in August 2017.

The attacks targeted Cisco routers with “Smart Install” and potentially affected government departments, companies and infrastructure facilities running Cisco equipment.

US and UK blame Russia for ‘malicious’ cyber-offensive

Tensions with Russia have escalated since the US and UK’s weekend strikes on targets in Syria suspected of being involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons.

While Australia did not take part in the strikes – the US, UK and France carried them out – Australia has been part of previous actions in Syria. There has been speculation that Russia will retaliate in the form of cyber-attacks.

It took months of investigations to trace the origin of the August cyber-attacks, authorities said, and Tuesday’s announcement was not in response to developments in Syria.

“Based on advice from Australian intelligence agencies, and in consultation with our allies, the Australian government has determined that Russian state-sponsored actors are responsible for this activity, which occurred in 2017,” the minister for law enforcement and cybersecurity, Angus Taylor, said in a said in a statement.

“These incidents are unacceptable and the Australian government calls on all countries, including Russia, not to take actions that could lead to damage of critical infrastructure that provide services to the public.

“Commercially available routers were used as a point of entry, demonstrating that every connected device is vulnerable to malicious activity.”