Aussie spooks warn of state-sponsored online attacks during G20

Australia's top spy agency has warned of 'real and persistent' threats to organisations, agencies and individuals linked to the G20 leaders conference in to be held down under next week. The advice issued by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) warns that large diplomatic and defence conferences attract attacks such as …

[Tom 35]

Aussie spooks should know

Because that's what they will be doing, along with the NSA and other friends.

[tom dial]

Re: Aussie spooks should know

And non-friends. No doubt the national intelligence services of all participants, signal and other, will be present and active, along with those of many non-participants.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cyber

You could redact every occurrence of "cyber" in the article and you'd not only improve the readability but also keep the overall intent. Loose lips sink ships. I'll keep something else at the forefront of my awareness: ASIO really, really shouldn't be holding forth here. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

[Anonymous Coward]

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] flying goggles [REDACTED] [REDACTED] wet lettuce [REDACTED] !

[Anonymous Coward]

"Who left that microUSB charger cable lying around?"

"Well, if no one claims it, I'll take it."

That came from a top executive, responsible for worldwide manufacturing planning of my company. So much for cyber security...

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: "Who left that microUSB charger cable lying around?"

He's a top executive, this WILL happen.

So where is the security sidekick with Morpheus-style leather anorak and glasses who will put a burly hand on his shoulder before the inevitable happens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Who left that microUSB charger cable lying around?"

Why not?

In 2008, a handful of USB flash drives were liberally sprinkled around the US CENTCOM parking lot. It only took one system administrator saying, "Cool, look what I found!" and plugging it into a misconfigured system (out of tens of thousands, as autorun wasn't disabled) and the rest is history. Every network, classified and unclassified was infected (again, due to non-adherence to both best practices and codified law).

Cost to clean up the mess? One billion dollars for the first incident. A month later, it was rinse and repeat, as a proper baseline *still* wasn't adhered to by the contractors.

The cost of recovery for incident 2 remains classified at levels much the same as nuclear warhead design plans.

[Anonymous Coward]

G20 is dooooooomed, but who by?

in a world where Cheltenham based experts routinely scan and find 50K vulnerable PCs, co-opt them into a command & control Botnet, and then wait until they are needed for some 'deniable' TCP-IP based trickery - nothing can surprise me anymore! though I don't know how the latest Menwith Hill TURMOIL machine code-name 'wet-lettuce' was left un-redacted on this website.

Belkins - unleash the dogs of DDoS war on El'Reg/92.52.96.89 - lets use the Elbonian servers so they get bombed instead of us. cue evil laugh, stroking of pet ferret whilst Rome burns...

[chipper_16]

Re: G20 is dooooooomed, but who by?

Pet Ferret was a nice touch

[thomas k.]

"Information gathered through cyber espionage ...."

"Information gathered through cyber espionage can be used to gain an economic, diplomatic or political advantage."

I guess that explains why the 5 Eyes engage in so much of it themselves, then.