Australia deploys its own cyber weapons in global counter-terrorism ops: sources

Christopher Joye

January 27, 2015

The frequency and severity of global cyber attacks is rising rapidly and extending into outright cyber war between states. And Australia is no innocent bystander, developing its own cyber weapons, and deploying them in counter-terrorist operations overseas.

As the US and North Korea accuse each other of attacking IT systems and internet infrastructure in their respective soil following the Sony Entertainment hack, the Australian Financial Review reports Australia is an active player in this new universe of unprecedented digital threats.

Multiple intelligence sources have told The Fin that for more than a decade Australia has been building an offensive "computer network attack" (CNA) capability inside the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), which openly advertises for hackers who are "passionate about breaking and securing computer systems" with "knowledge of offensive and defensive techniques to protect Australia's interests".

Sources say ASD has launched cyber attacks on terrorists in the Middle East that were conspiring against Australia. ASD's small team of CNA specialists, a fraction of the numbers working in its "computer network exploitation" area (which steals foreign intelligence), develop their own malware and borrow payloads from the larger CNA resources residing inside America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ.

Australia has also allegedly harnessed its offensive cyber skills to hit back against a non-democratic state that was pilfering our public and private secrets, intelligence sources say. This involved implanting malware on foreign servers that erased data and disabled the cooling systems such that they were ultimately "fried".