Michael Edwards
September 19, 2016
Cyber attack threats to be focus of Australia’s intelligence agencies review
The rising threat posed by cyber attacks is set to be the focus of a review of Australia’s intelligence agencies.
The nation’s six intelligence agencies will be subject to the probe, which the Government has said will ensure they can appropriately respond to security threats.
The agencies involved include ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service), ASIO (Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation) and the Australian Signals Directorate.
National security officials said attacks on sensitive Australian computer networks were occurring on a daily basis, and were being carried out by hackers sponsored by foreign powers — especially China.
In recent times, China and Russia have stepped up their cyber warfare activities with Australia among their targets.
Experts have also pointed to jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq as the other major threat facing the country.
Defence Minister Marise Payne spoke to AM this morning and said one of the focuses of the review would “most certainly go to changes in technology”.
“[The changes] … are happening extremely rapidly and [have elevated] the challenges in terms of intelligence collection and analysis even higher than they have been previously,” she said.
TECH ADVANCES MAKE CYBERSPACE MOST LIKELY THREAT
Dr Tobias Feakin, a national security expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said it was “always sound policy” to review the functions of any intelligence agency.
He said technological advances were increasingly making cyberspace the realm from where security threats would emerge.
“Certainly post Snowden, I think having had quite a lot of capability revealed then, there needs to be a review in understanding how our agencies reshape themselves towards the goal of being able to carry out signals intelligence, how that signals intelligence filters through the intelligence frameworks,” he said.
Chinese hackers were behind a 2011 attack on the Defence Science Technology Organisation.
They were also blamed for a major cyber attack on the computers at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), which compromised sensitive systems across the Federal Government.
Dr Feakin said over the last 10 years they had seen an increase of instances of “different states flexing their muscles in cyberspace”.
“In a way … we’re really only waking up to this issue, I think, as a strategic game changer,” he said.
GROWING NEED FOR INTER-AGENCY COORDINATION
But the cyber threat does not just come from state powers. Terrorist groups also use it to radicalise followers, as well as to plan attacks.
Dr John Blaxland, an intelligence expert at the Australian National University, said that not only was the work harder technologically, but the challenge had grown broader and greater due to the “threat that Daesh, or the so-called Islamic State has put out there”.
“No longer is the barrier the way it was when it was just Al Qaeda and … you had to rise above the level to prove yourself worthy of being a member of Al Qaeda,” he said.
“Nowadays it’s self-declared, you just declare yourself I’m with Daesh, or the so-called Islamic State and go and kill somebody, or blow something up.
"So how do you detect that? That’s a growing challenge that’s also involving a lot more inter-agency coordination.
"People are having to really think through their legal, ethical and organisational challenges that go with actually making that work properly.
"Between the federal governments, local governments, state governments and the various agencies, it’s getting really complicated.”
The Federal Government has committed to holding intelligence reviews every five years.
There have been previous reviews — one in 2011 and another in 2004 — which investigated Australia’s role in intelligence failures into the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.
Australia’s international intelligence cooperation would also likely be scrutinised in the review.
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