‘Bloody useless’ hacking security

A CYBER-SECURITY plan established under former prime minister Scott Morrison has been slammed as “bloody useless” in dealing with large-scale hacking.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said on Monday the Optus and Medibank breaches had exposed flaws in Australia’s cyber laws.

“In those events, we were meant to have at our disposal a piece of law that was passed by the former government to help us engage with companies under cyber attack,” she said.

“That law was bloody useless, not worth the ink printed on the paper when it came to actually using it in a cyber incident. It was poorly drafted.”

Ms O’Neil said that when Optus was hacked, she was left “really angry” that there was “no cyber-security response function” in the government.

“Those events were completely foreseeable events that were not foreseen by the previous government,” she said.

About 10 million people had their personal information, such as passport and Medicare details, exposed in the Optus hack. A further 10 million had their details breached in a later hack of Medibank.

A cyber office, to be led by a new co-ordinator for cyber security, will now be established within the Department of Home Affairs to lead emergency responses to future attacks.

The government hopes to have it set up within a month to provide “structure and spine” to a refreshed cyber-security strategy.

Ms O’Neil said reforming Australia’s security laws and the widening of the definition of a critical asset to include consumer data were also on the table.

“(The laws) are not fit for purpose at the moment – they need reform,” she said.

Former Telstra chief executive officer Andy Penn, who sits on the government advisory panel for cybersecurity, said that since Covid-19 there had been a “dramatic increase” in the rate of cyber crime.

“The bottom line is there was not a single person within government who could step in (during the Optus hack),” he said.

“The community expected the government to be in a better position to give it guidance as to what to do to protect itself.”