CyberCX

Joining ABC News live from London, CyberCX's Alastair MacGibbon said that the Crowdstrike outage crippling systems worldwide is a reflection of how connected we are now in our societies, but that the priority of governments everywhere should be reassuring the public. "It's no surprise that we end up with the types of impacts we’re seeing given the [customer] base of Crowdstrike. When something goes wrong, it goes wrong in a big way." "It's disappointing, but it's better to know that it doesn't seem like a malicious act because that can give more calm to the public. In slower time, we need to understand how to build systems to reduce the likelihood of this happening again."

CyberCX is aware and advising our customers of an outage affecting organisations in Australia and New Zealand. We understand that this has been caused by an issue affecting organisations who have installed Crowdstrike Falcon in their IT environments. Crowdstrike is a global cyber security company who provide detection and monitoring tools to cyber and IT teams. At this time, CyberCX is actively tracking the situation and are awaiting information detailing scope and recovery. We will continue to support affected customers as this incident evolves.

As the New Zealand Government vows to take a stance on cyber attacks by calling out Chinese hacking activity, CyberCX's Dan Richardson says more transparency will be valuable.   "It's something that happens more often than you'd imagine," Dan told Newstalk ZB.   "Shining a spotlight on it can really only be good for raising cyber resilience of New Zealand."

CyberCX’s Dan Richardson says that malicious cyber activity involving foreign state-based actors targeting New Zealand has never been more pervasive.   “Against the backdrop of a deteriorating geopolitical landscape, this issue is getting worse both in New Zealand and for our allies,” said Dan. “Last week, New Zealand participated in an Australian-led multilateral attribution of the pernicious hacking group APT40, outing them as the Chinese Ministry of State Security.”   “While more can be done, it is positive to see that New Zealand is waking up to the issue and showing increasing willingness to recognise the scale of the threat posed by foreign state-based cyber activity to our economy and our community.”   Dan said the NCSC should be commended for initiating the review and putting a spotlight on how New Zealand should respond to and report malicious activity involving foreign state-based actors.   Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/dP-FHcTM

After Australia and its allies attributed Chinese-backed group APT40 to significant hacking in Australia, CyberCX's Alastair MacGibbon said that while China won't like being called out, it won't stop them.   "They operate on a scale that is difficult to quantify and most of the time, an organisation won’t even know they’re inside a system," said Alastair.    “China runs itself as a surveillance state. They gather information from everywhere, at all times, and they definitely keep an eye on the Chinese diaspora in Australia.”   Read more in The Australian Financial Review: https://lnkd.in/dZa8G8Qr

Speaking to BusinessDesk NZ, CyberCX’s Dan Richardson said the release of a new Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) report into cyber activity targeting politicians this week was one of a series of recent events that represented a change in tone around how New Zealand addresses cyber security issues involving China.   “It’s a definite change in tone, I think, from the top,” Richardson said. “And obviously, as we work through the New Zealand cyber security strategy, there’s going to have to be some real thought given to, not just aligning with our friends and partners, but also: what other bits of technical and non-technical capability to do we need as a country to protect ourselves and our citizens?”   Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/d-PKaY5X

Writing in the The Australian Financial Review, CyberCX's Alastair MacGibbon says that the government's willingness to lead a multilateral attribution of the prolific hacking group APT40 reflects continued maturity of cyber security policy, but more can be done.    "Australia, along with our Five Eyes partners (New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the US), Germany, South Korea and Japan should be commended for taking this step" Alastair writes.   "By denouncing APT40 and the espionage activity of the Chinese national security apparatus, Australia and our allies have sought to establish a precedent that democratic institutions are off limits."   Alastair says that while Australia and like-minded democracies have the resources and ability to partner with industry and make significant investments in our national security capabilities and cyber defences, many of our Pacific neighbours do not, leaving them vulnerable. "Australia must continue to help our near neighbours strengthen their cyber resiliency in the face of relentless espionage by China."    Read more in the full opinion piece: https://lnkd.in/g2MttvPt

CyberCX's Alastair MacGibbon told Sunrise this morning that the Australian Government has taken an important step by unmasking prolific hacking group APT40 as the Chinese Ministry of State Security.   "Attribution is a diplomatic tool and it's quite a significant event for a country," said Alastair. "And it wasn't just Australia, it was the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and, most importantly, South Korea and Japan, who all came out and identified this group as Chinese government yesterday."   "It's an important thing because unmasking these hackers actually goes some way to putting pressure on China to stop these actions."

Chinese government-backed hackers are repeatedly targeting public and private sector networks across Australia and the wider Asia Pacific region CyberCX's Katherine Mansted told BBC Global News.   "This is the first time Australia has led on one of these multilateral attributions. Normally it's the US Government in the driving seat, but it's the Australian Government today," said Katherine.   "We've seen not just the usual anglosphere of the five eyes joining this statement, but also some non-traditional democracies as well in South Korea, Japan and Germany. An increasingly broad-based group of countries is drawing a line in the sand and saying what they think is not acceptable in cyber space."   Katherine said while more of this malicious activity is happening, there is now less tolerance for espionage activity that targets businesses in the private sector and democratic institutions. "Australia is not alone here, a couple of months ago New Zealand pointed the finger to the same Chinese hacking group."

CyberCX's Katherine Mansted says that OpenAI should be commended for thinking about the potential shock waves its products could cause, however there are many developers who are not taking these steps.   "Once people become more realistic about how easily it is to be fooled, progress can happen," Katherine told Capital Brief, pointing to a recent survey in which 52% of IT leaders said they were confident they could identify deepfakes.   “Not all companies yet have incorporated latest trends in artificial intelligence and deepfake social engineering into their standard cyber security awareness training. It's still very much based on preventing text-based emails, for example," she continued. "We are not powerless.”   Katherine also emphasised that while generative AI is not yet being used to create sophisticated malware, that is likely to change as bad actors refine their use of the technology. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/dN38BRmy