Australian Weather Bureau Hacked by Foreign Cyber Attackers

Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which owns one of Australia’s largest supercomputer, was subjected to a cyber-attack in 2015 by foreign spies, said a report by The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) on Wednesday.

The Australian Weather Bureau is responsible for providing climate research information which is valuable for other countries as well. It also delivers climate research information to shipping and airlines companies and works closely with the defence department. The hack has made various Australian Defence informations vulnerable.

ACSC report shows, that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) discovered the presence of a particular Remote Access Tool (RAT) which is the most famous malware tool for state-sponsored hackers. A total of 1095 cyber attack incidents took place from January 2015 to June 2016, which was enough for the Australian agencies to take actions in this regard. The hackers have copied uncountable files from the ABM’s system.

An Unnamed official has stated that the Chinese Government is behind this attack but the Chinese Government has marked these comments as baseless and unconstructive.

China has been subjected to such allegations in the past:

1. In 2013, China was accused by the Australian agencies for stealing the blueprints of Australian Intelligence Agency Headquarter.
2. US Agencies blamed China for hacking into the country’s system and jeopardising the information of around 4 million US government employees.

Chinese officials have never accepted any of the allegations and have said that they themselves are suffering from numerous cyber attacks. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more updates. Don’t forget to like and share. Do tell us your views in the comment box below. 12 October 2016 Rohan Jaitly