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Aussie Central Bank Discloses Chinese Cyber-Attack
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s computer networks have been repeatedly and successfully hacked in a series of cyber-attacks to infiltrate sensitive internal information. The RBA disclosed to The Australian Financial Review (after their investigation) that multiple computers within the RBA’s network were had been infiltrated by a Chinese-developed malicious software. While no details were given on what information was stolen, a defense department official warned, that "the targeting of high profile events, such as the G20, by state-sponsored adversaries... is a real and persistent threat. Cyber intruders are looking for information on... the government’s intentions." The hack appears related to the 2011 G-20 summit, at which the French government have already confirmed over 150 computers were hacked for months with files "redirected to Chinese sites." Australia’s cyber-spy agency, the Defense Signals Directorate, said “there are many examples of [Australian] entities being targeted due to involvement in high profile events” like the G20. Currency wars meet cyber wars - or is it the other way around?
Via The Australian Financial Review,
The Reserve Bank of Australia’s computer networks have been repeatedly and successfully hacked in a series of cyber-attacks to infiltrate sensitive internal information, including by Chinese-developed malicious software.
...
After investigations by The Australian Financial Review, RBA officials disclosed that the central bank had been infiltrated by a Chinese-developed malicious software, or “malware”spy program that was seeking intelligence on sensitive G20 negotiations.
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The Defence spokesperson did, however, warn that “the targeting of high profile events, such as the G20, by state-sponsored adversaries ... is a real and persistent threat.” “Cyber intruders are looking for information on... the government’s intentions.”
In March 2011, Paris Match revealed, and the French government confirmed, that over 150 computers in its Ministry of Economy and Finances had been hacked for months before the French-hosted G20 summit in February 2011.
Tense negotiations with china
Many confidential government files were then “redirected to Chinese sites”. More than 10,000 state computers needed to be shut down.
The 2011 G20 summit involved tense negotiations with China over the level of its exchange rate, currency reserves and trade surpluses, which North Atlantic officials argue are being manipulated to China’s advantage.
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Australia’s cyber-spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, said “there are many examples of [Australian] entities being targeted due to involvement in high profile events” like the G20.
DSD has disclosed that in October 2011 “an Australian government agency was compromised when a socially engineered email was sent to an agency employee who worked on G20 matters”. “This email pertained to be about G20 matters and appeared to come from the employee’s general manager.”
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Executable Malware Application
RBA officials told the Financial Review that DSD was brought in to fix this problem.
In the incident report, in the FoI documents, the RBA said that over two days in November 2011 “highly targeted malicious emails were sent to several Bank staff, including senior management up to head of department”.
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Officials from the RBA’s Risk Management Unit said: “Bank assets could have been potentially compromised, leading to . . . information loss and reputation [damage].”
Richard Byfield, a former senior Australian defence official with cyber responsibilities and current government adviser, told the Financial Review central banks and listed companies were cyber targets “because they hold so much confidential information that has the potential to move markets”.
At the time of the November 2011 incident, financial markets were undecided about whether the RBA would cut rates for a second month in succession. The RBA’s board surprised some participants with its decision to lower the cash rate on December 6.
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the Aussies better quit blaming the Chinese-who else is going to buy up all of their commodities at these inflated prices? this blame game is getting stupid-pointing fingers will soon lead to pointing loaded guns
Gotta wonder along those lines just why the Ozzies would be so upset with somebody trying to find out important information from the G-20. I mean the G-20 of all institutional affiliations within the show, eat, fart, coke, hookers, photograph and meaningless speech club.
For example: Seating arrangements at the main conference table, seating arrangements at dinner, lunch and breakfast. Menus. Each and every last menu that the folks would be feasting upon. The wine list... a bigger deal no less considering the nominal (notional amount) of expensive wines to be consumed. Floral decorations. Hyacinth or Chrysanthemum? You get the picture. Major questions like, "Will Obama Attend hisself or send John Kerry. Who is John Kerry? Hookers. Who has contracted to provide the hookers to the guys? The girls? The other whatevers? How many hookers? How many guys? Girls? Whatevres?
Understandably, the list of information is virtually (LOL, unintended) endless, like Pi.
But it has fuck all of any functional utility.
So, who cares, really, other than the guys who need to get the bigger budgets for more anti-hacking, retaliatory hacking, hacking hacking, hocker hacking, porn and tranny porn hacking.
Who the fuck cares?
Oh, and the Enquirer. Yes, they're in need of some "meaty" stories.
It wasn't a hack ~ just a few harmless bitcoin miner tag~teams up to their usual hijinks... If you click the ad on the side of the page, you can get in on the fun too for $1299 [or have a little less fun for $649]...
~~~
Who makes the money off the franchise on selling those computer cards anyway?... I guess it's a legitimate question...
The kids have got to find something to do in their spare time.
“Not enough jobs to go round for China's 6.3 million graduates a year”
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/asia-pacific/not-enough-jobs-to-go-round-for-chinas-6-3-million-graduates-a-year
“new computer science graduates are so plentiful that their pay in Shenzhen has fallen to just $550 a month, less than double the wage of a blue-collar worker”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/business/as-graduates-rise-in-china-office-jobs-fail-to-keep-up.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
China's deliberate footprints and redirections showing China spying on RBA Rate movement is just misdirection, what they're really spying for is whether the RBA has commenced Gold purchases. This is China putting the feelers out there.
Remember, the Bush Lap-Dog Howard Government sold off 2/3rds of Australia's Gold Reserves a decade ago (sell that dip Howard ya fuck-head).
The Chinese are more than aware that the rest of the world (particularly the West) knows China's Gold habits and assumed intent of a Gold backed Yuan. Knowing is one thing, doing something about it is a different story. China needs to know that Intel.
This is actually an ASIO and ONA issue, DSD is merely called upon to do the investigative work.
Like I've been saying; China has state sponsored Student Hacking Rings...good hackers get Defense jobs.
Anyway, China's Gold aspirations are very real...and so should yours be!
The Chinese are very concerned about the Aussies plan to convert the national currency to bitcoin. They will shutter all gold and silver mines and just mine for bit coins, you know, because bitcoin is safer and a better investment.
Good use of irony, Scro.
That was Sir Menzies and the Japanese, not the Chinese. Not a bad attempt though (the downvote was not mine, actually got an upvote). :)
"In 1938 his enemies ridiculed him as "Pig Iron Bob", the result of his industrial battle with waterside workers who refused to load scrap iron being sold to Imperial Japan."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Menzies (being the most at hand online reference, as opposed to wasting more time digging up an academic reference).
Police states on the way to fully fledged dictatorship
are modeled on the lowest common denominated gullible sheep.
Their computer security lacks accordingly.
Conformity is any parasites dream, no need to crack code
if only the one password is politically correct.
i would think the chinese are the last ones to suspect....someone probably thru down a chinese glove...
Well, it is obvious that only China can write the Chinese language and hack programs redirecting to Chinese websites.
That's why we (US) need to spend billions on cyberwarfare units.
I'm not sure it's needed though, after all we usually give up secrets moar freely than that (i.e. Los Alamos).
/sarc intended.
ben bernanke has actually done the right thing we've been printing money for 100 years lets go for another 100,,,,as gold as the foundation ,,,,,,,,,
genuinely curious here, but if the entire world elite (according to conspiracy theories abound) work together, then why would the chinese even need these persistent hack attacks?
or are they supposedly not real either? sort of electronic psyops?
the elite have benfited in china as well of course it is all set up, they are argueing over a useless island for god sakes
need to know basis. . .
layers and layers, each populated by individuals filtering information specific to their task, via their own beliefs/mindset.
conformity controlled more tightly as one ascends the pyramid.
is this not how governments, military, corporations, ect. all function?
why should the chinese attack the Aussies unless the aussies are patsies for the US?
IS there an intelligence network between USA and Aussie land?
"Operation chinchong" monitoring China and the chinese knee jerk to it?
Oz is still letting the US fly drones out of one of their mainland air force bases,,,
Do stupid shit to China - expect the Chinese to not be happy and return the favour in another manner.
one of many instances.
Where, Tindal???
"why should the chinese attack the Aussies unless the aussies are patsies for the US? "
Tiny Aussie populations vulnerability is a patsy in the game. Back than the commodity dollars and their currencies got hammered if market control had free play. Aussies on a leash and a commonwealth experiment ground are brought into line with them overwhelmed with non white immigration and
submerged into Australasia and subsequently treated as such.
Sorry Aussies, you are on your own, sold out to NWO.
No-No, WE ARE SORRY!
The Global Elite will be relocating all their wealth to Aust as European stability is too low.
Australia, the new Switzerland....Gold Custodians....HQ NWO & Agenda21....'The Capitol'.
Sorry rest of World, you're on your own.
'IS there an intelligence network between USA and Aussie land?'
Yes, not the first time I sent a special greeting to the folks sweating it out at Pine Gap, NT, Australia. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Gap
Im not sure which 'disinformation' to believe anymore........
"All of it, none of it, it doesn't matter"
Dagney Taggert
+1
The "Chinese" hacker thing has been intensifying in the msm with no signs of abating. Pretty intense and you'd think the whole world of news media had come down with amnesia about just where even the words, hacking, malware, phising, and cyber warfare originated. You'd also think a sophisticated hacker would at least use a proxy server, but no, it's all going to some warehouse in Guang-dong helpfully lit up like a Christmas tree on google maps.
It is now taken for granted by the average sheep that the world's most active hackers are in China. Less than 6 years ago, it was the US and Israel, and apparently all the thousands of hackers in those countries have disappeared off the face of the earth. Weird.
Australia is part of the intelligence sharing network called Echelon, so perhaps this is a real hack from China. But you know what? I don't have a clue any more what information to trust about alleged cyber crimes when it is apparent that the criminals issue the press information in the first place.
With a budget in the multiple billions, and set to increase personnel five fold this year, not one msm outlet mentions the world's biggest and oldest hacker: Pentagon's cyber warfare division, aka Cyber Command. According to the Guardian, that division's antics does not even include the $20 billion the NSA spends on outsourcing electronic surveillance work to private companies like Booz Allen.
While our overlords are attempting to direct our attention offshore, the real cyber threat to most Americans comes from inside our own borders.
Be careful what you do online.
Maybe the Chinese just didn't believe their eyes seeing the information that 99% of Australia's gold was "stored" abroad.
And wanted to check the real situation..
That's Austria's gold, not Australia's.
I know, I know, all them white Anglo-Saxon Protestants look the same
Nothing also looks the same on all sides of the Atlas.
http://www.silverdoctors.com/bank-of-australia-admints-99-9-of-gold-rese...
We're getting FRISKY!
"BEIJING--Chinese financial institutions issued 620 billion yuan ($99.76 billion) of new yuan loans in February, below economists' expectations and down from CNY1.07 trillion in January, data from the People's Bank of China showed Sunday.
The median forecast of 13 economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires was for CNY700 billion of new yuan loans.
Total social financing--a broader measurement of credit in the economy--was CNY1.07 trillion in February, compared with CNY2.54 trillion in January."
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/china-new-yuan-loans-cny620-billion-in-feb...
Condolences to AUD longs.
TEEE Minus 1 Hour
the chinese have built their infrasture off of the dollar now its time for internal consumption raises in wages and all those people will be moving into all those empty buildings but all that we hear over here in west is a housing bubble which will explode and give way to a western dollar crisis and in reality there is no crisis. Gold revaluation
It will soon be time for OUR guys to do a little cyber-attacking... You think that WE do not know how to slip some malware into China?
silver will go no where it will be like a roller coaster though with a final downward thud......good luck selling all your silver on ebay
eBay, lol... I've never signed up or tried to sell anything on that POS site ever since they came into existence. I check it out every 3 years or so just to see what info they want from me for the privelege of paying them to use their service. The fees they charge are beyond greedy. Add in PayPal fees and it's stratospheric! Only morons who are too fucking lazy to get off their ass and find better deals use eBay to buy/sell shit online. Their FREE site Kijiji will get you more CASH sales in your local area than dicking around with fees and running to the post office on time to make sure you maintain your 99.7% approval rating on eBag.
Stuxnet, Duqu amongst others?
10-4, mate!
Who, precisely, are "OUR" guys?
You do know OUR guys have been cyber attacking for a long time?
Many haven't realized what Stuxnet and its derivatives have been simply because it has been portrayed so plainly in our eyes that it was against some msm hated country.
Who cares. Fuck private central banks.
they wanted a date julia gillard gets knifed in the back and replaced as PM / leader before the next election.
They all spy and attack each other..or, Maybe someone is trying to blame China and stir more crap..
Like in movie Sum of All Fears
I have a bridge to sell you.
Disinformation. Propaganda. How much Aussie dollars they created, just for fun? Beat the beard. There's a new game in town.
Isn't the first rule of a successful attack to, well... successfully spoof its source? I know it's easy to blame it on Can... erm... China, but are they really sure those smiles come with a squint?
I always have to envision myself in the opponents shoes for a moment - I mean a US government agency would NEVER ever do this, not once in a thousand years right?
And then this self-righteous indignation, just like KD - big LOL!
Chinese citizenism cyber blobbing-up: it's the mattering thing.
One key stroke and poof, all your money is gone....to china
Well when you depend on this guy for your anti-virus software, what do you expect?
Tell me you wouldn't do some MDMA analouges at his pleasuredome with those young womens he always has laying around.
Or would you rather discuss the intracasies of journaling filesystems with Peter Norton?
http://www.collezionedatiffany.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/...
As opposed to what other AV software?
Damned "spams or scams, that come through the portal" are out to get us!
With inspiration from Australian 'Communications' Minister Stephen Conroy - http://delimiter.com.au/2010/06/08/oh-dear-conroys-spams-or-scams-in-the... , http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ski-holidays-drag-ministers-stephe... .
The Chinese know a lot more about Australia, its politicians, its reources, its key people and everything else there is to know, than the Australians do.
The politicians in Australa are largely naive, visionless and prone to seeking self serving outcomes at the expense of their nation.
Not so long ago a minister of defence was accepting free flights etc from a Chinese business woman.
You can't blame the Chinese for buying Australia out one mine, one farm, one politician at a time.
While Australians are lured by the prospect of a quick buck much more is to follow.
They do seem like the "home-owners association" of the G20.
Beats paying for all that fucking coal, comrade.
Agreed, with exception to myself and what appears to be a few fellow ZH readers. :)
is the ORDO AB CHAO narrative vis-a-vis internet 2.0 starting to become apparent yet? "China" will call for globlal banking and hacking rules as well now.
finally... a chorus of voice, the only thing possible, and thus the steel cage closes on the mind of man.
almost like it was planned 40 fuckin years ago
meanwhile people will be winging over their 401k and pleading to have their rights taken
enjoy.
there is no more China, no more US.
there is only a global structure, a New World Order
http://youtu.be/NKkRDMil0bw
Last night the movie Austin Powers Goldmember was on TV. Are the their bitchez comparing Gold Member sizes? ;-)
[sigh, rolls eyes] which is a smart-Alec way of asking: Are the Chinese digging for info on Australia's real gold reserves, and that of other CB's? Inquiring minds in Beijing want to know.
Is that a joke?
I think what they really meant was that major weaknesses and worries about the over leveraged banking system could have been accessed for later use.
By the way, the government has given the banking system a $380 billion permanent bailout facility to cover future "problems". The Australian government does not have that kind of fire power and secondly it's the equivalent of the USA providing a 5 trillion dollar back up.
It's all bullshit.
Boys, I tell ya, we're gonna have to kill them Chinese sonso'bitches someday.
The Australian army (professional and principled as it is) doesn't even have enough bullets to do that. In any case why the general resentment against all Chinese?
He did indicate only the "sons'o'bitches"...surely that can't be all of em!
LOL Point taken
Chinese still mad about the Perth Panda coins?
"You steal our Panda, fuck you, you keep you kangaroo."
Aussies should make a gold coin with a mug on it.
'Apparently' (yeah I gave up on believing it still exists long ago) we have about 80 tonnes of the stuff gathering dust in the City of London which would do the job suitably.
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/aussiegold
If the Aussies or anyone else doesn't want certain information to be available worldwide then they should take precautions to ensure that it doesn't get there. As a Corp Controller I ensured that NO, that's ZERO computerized information worth stealing was available to be stolen. Never got hacked - never had a breach.
It's actually quite simple to do. Just make sure that no computers on which sensitive information is stored or processed has an internet connection, and that ALL personnel who have access to those machines have a job-related password (changed frequently) that allows them access ONLY to the information they need on the machine it is stored on and nothing else on that machine.
Of course, the employee wouldn't be able to play online games during the work day... or check their email and their folkbook accounts... sucks to be them...
The Chinese military (People's Liberation Army or P.L.A.) essentially owns Chinese companies such as Lenovo.
Not only do they have active military hacking of foreign governments and banks, their hardware manufacturers supply the chips that go in the computers worldwide.
I would not doubt they have hardware level backdoors built into the chips and components.
We are damn fools for letting China manufacture everything.
I thought 16 wifi NICs on-board seemed a little fishy.
Yes, but the US execs helped improve (tax-preferred) "shareholder value", and got their bonuses, to lift the Dow. /sarc
I thin you're blowing that out of proportions. It's only Huawei and few others.
By the way, this break-in is nothing. Did you guys see that hackers stole $12K worth of Bitcoin from a Web site?
AUD$ just opened with a 30 pip gap down to 1.0200, retracing half and continuing to tick downward.
Ugly macro out of China.
GLOBAL RECOVERY, BITCHEZ - COPPER DEMAND DOWN 20%.
Thinking about all this stuff is just way too confusing and time consuming (I need to walk my dog now.). We should just stay the course (which our leaders tell us has been working so well for years now) and continue off shoring our jobs to China and buying their stuff because we can buy it from them cheaper than we can produce it. There is definitely a true value proposition here which I'm sure we must be on the right side of - otherwise we wouldn't be doing it, right? Anyway, one last point, I've heard that debt = money and we have a lot of debt so that's another good indicator that all is well. (OK not the last point, I forgot to mention that the DOW is at an all time high). - From "Ramblings of an Incoherent Sheep"
I would bet that every on line banking account is a door way into the bank's computer system. Pass words and so called firewalls are weak protection.