Australia Parliament’s network hit by hackers

SYDNEY — The Australian Parliament said Friday that hackers had tried to break into its computer network, which includes lawmakers’ email archives, but there were no indications that data had been stolen.

“Following a security incident on the parliamentary computing network, a number of measures have been implemented to protect the network and its users,” Parliament’s presiding officers, Tony Smith and Scott Ryan, said in a joint statement. “All users have been required to change their passwords. This has occurred overnight and this morning.”

“There is no evidence that any data has been accessed or taken at this time, however this will remain subject to ongoing investigation,” the statement read.

Australian news outlets reported that security agencies were investigating the possibility that a foreign government, possibly China’s, was behind the attack.

The nature of the attack “suggests a state actor because it’s hard to make money from breaching a parliamentary system,” said Fergus Hanson, head of the International Cyber Policy Center at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

China’s attempts to influence Australian politics have become a major issue here, and Hanson said that for Australia, “obviously China is the No. 1 threat-actor when it comes to cyberattacks.” But he added that Iranian, North Korean and Russian hackers would also be possible suspects in the latest attack.

It comes as Australia is preparing for national elections that are likely to be held in May. Given that, Hanson said, the attack on a system that houses lawmakers’ official email accounts was concerning, in light of wellknown recent attempts to influence elections through cyberattacks — most notoriously, the Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election in 2016, which involved the theft of emails.

But in their statement, Ryan and Smith said there was “no evidence that this is an attempt to influence the outcome of parliamentary processes or to disrupt or influence electoral or political processes.”