Australian Government, Department of Defence

History

2022: Cyberattack and data breach of tens of thousands of military personnel

On October 31, 2022, it became known that the Australian Department of Defense was subjected to a hacker attack: attackers injected malware with ransomware functions into one of the department's information subsystems. It is said that in the hands of criminals could be personal information about tens of thousands of military personnel.

It is known that the target of cybercriminals was the ForceNet platform, which, under an agreement with the Ministry of Defense, is managed by an external provider of information and communication services. That contractor initially argued that data on current or former department staff had not been compromised. But the results of further investigation suggest otherwise.

Australian Defence Department hit by cyber attack

Apparently, the attackers gained access to some personal information about military personnel, such as dates of birth and dates of conscription. The ForceNet database can contain approximately 40,000 records. So far, however, it is not clear how much information was stolen.

We take this issue very seriously and are working with the provider to determine the scale of the attack and find out if the data of current and former employees of the department were affected, the Australian Department of Defense said.

Recently, a number of Australian organizations have been subjected to large-scale hacker attacks. So, in September 2022, it was reported about the hacking of the telecommunications company Optus: attackers received unauthorized access to information about almost 10 million users. And in October 2022, hackers carried out a cyber attack on the Australian insurance company Medibank, managing to steal personal data on millions of customers. In this situation, the country's Ministry of Defense warns that in the foreseeable future the intensity and sophistication of hacks in cyberspace will grow.^[1]

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