Oz Parliament’s computer network targeted by hacker

CANBERRA: Australia's parliament had to reset all the passwords on its computer network after an unknown attacker tried to hack into the system, an official statement said on Friday.

In the statement, the legislature's presiding officers said

"a number of measures" had been taken to protect the network following a "security incident on the parliamentary computing network", reports CNN.

The officers said they had no evidence as yet that the hack was an attempt to influence or disrupt parliament.

The incident comes just a month after German politicians were hit by a massive data leak including credit card details, phone numbers and email addresses.

Opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten said on Friday the attack should be a "wake up call".

Local media said a foreign government could be behind the hack, but the parliamentary statement said only that "relevant agencies" were investigating it.

In another development, the Venezuelan embassy in Moscow on Thursday reported that the websites of Venezuelan Foreign Ministry in various countries across the globe were under threat of cyber attacks.

According to Sputnik, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has closed the operations of its websites everywhere until proper security measures are restored.

"The hacker attack and the interference in the operation of the websites is an international cybercrime aimed at continuing attacks on Venezuela," the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying.