AG's office defends record on Anonymous attacks

The Federal Government has defended its ability to combat cyber-crime in the face of repeated successful attacks on Government websites carried out under the name Anonymous.

Responding to Computerworld Australia, the Australian attorney general’s department said it was taking action to address attacks such as the recent denial of service (DoS) attack on two government websites to protest the Federal Government’s plans to introduce mandatory ISP-level Internet content filtering.

“Government departments, in conjunction with Internet service providers are making every effort to ensure that their websites remain available,” a spokesperson for the attorney general said. “Where Internet addresses of illegitimate users have been identified these can be prevented from connecting to an affected site. The Cyber Security Operations Centre within Defence Signals Directorate is coordinating the sharing of these addresses with impacted Government agencies.”

The spokesperson also referred to the attorney-general launch of Australia’s “first ever comprehensive Cyber Security Strategy” in November last year.

“The strategy describes how the Government is harnessing the full range of resources to help protect government, business and individual Australians and their computer systems,” the spokesperson said.

“The strategy sets out the priorities that the Government will purse to achieve these objectives, ranging from ensuring Australia has an effective legal framework and skilled workforce to working with the business community and international partners on cyber security issues. “

In September Anonymous launched a distributed denial of service (DDos) attack against the pm.gov.au web site aimed at protesting the Government’s mandatory ISP-level content filter.

Despite the gravity of the situation there has been little public comment coming from both the Opposition and Government. Opposition finance minister Barnaby Joyce did however make some comment but seemed unable to grasp the intricacies and severity of the situation.

“Who are these creeps? Why do we even have to discuss it? Just knock it out,” Joyce said speaking on ABC TV’s Q&A program.

“These people are horrible creepy bits of work – get rid of them. Get them off the Internet.”

Earlier this month it was revealed that Australia's biggest banks, telcos, and utilities have handed sensitive data to government for the protection of critical infrastructure against terrorism and natural disasters.

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