According to a report by the Financial Review, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) suffered a cyberattack, a series of them to be exact, designed to infiltrate sensitive information. As one would expect, the Review’s report said the malware used in the attack came from China.
According to sources who spoke with the Review, the RBA hired a pentesting company to assess the integrity of their network. After an investigation carried out by the Review, RBA officials “disclosed that the central bank had been infiltrated by a Chinese-developed malicious software, […] that was seeking intelligence on sensitive G20 negotiations.”
The story goes on to say that several systems were compromised, but the RBA would not disclose the exact details, including what information was stolen or who was targeted within the bank. Freedom of Information disclosures from RBA confirmed that Phishing had taken place, and that a malicious payload was discovered running on at least one system. The malware itself was undetected by the bank’s endpoint protection measures.
After the Review’s story hit the wires, RBA addressed it in the following statement:
As reported in today’s media, the Bank has on occasion been the target of cyber attacks. The Bank has comprehensive security arrangements in place which have isolated these attacks and ensured that viruses have not been spread across the Bank’s network or systems. At no point have these attacks caused the Bank’s data or information to be lost or its systems to be corrupted.
The Bank’s IT systems operate safely, securely and with a high degree of resilience. The Bank takes cyber security and its potential consequences extremely seriously. As part of its extensive efforts to ensure that security arrangements are best practice, the Bank routinely consults with the Defence Signals Directorate and draws on the expertise of specialist private firms. There is ongoing rigorous testing of the Bank’s IT systems and regular training of staff.
News of yet another attack linked to malware alleged to have originated in China comes just after a Foreign Minister called such allocutions false, and noted that China itself