A cyber-attack against Telstra’s network that left tens of thousands of homes and businesses without internet is fair to say, a problem for all carriers and the Australian Government, because it shows how quickly Australia could be bought to a shuddering halt by Chinese or Russian hackers running denial of service attacks against Australian IT infrastructure.
Yesterday millions of Australian homes were left without broadband which in turn means no IP security cameras, no smart home technology and no content streaming or accessing the web.
The stark reality is that the next war will be as much a cyber war as it will be a war with bullets and missiles.
Foreign powers such as China will move to quickly knock out our carriers networks exactly as cyber attackers have done yesterday against Telstra, but if it’s war they will also knock out power grids providing them the power to control other essential services.
Globally cyber-attacks are being undertaken by foreign Governments such as China and Russia and violent anarchists who in the US have attempted to bring down Federal Government run operations with Cyber attacks such as the one Australia experienced.
Cyber-attacks such as the one that has bought down Telstra is a straight-out digital attack that hit servers using viruses and hacking attack tools.
In the case of Telstra, they chose to target DNS which stands for Domain Name System this is basically the phonebook of the Internet. Without going into detail you can search the basics of God DNS works via Wikipedia.
Back on point, hackers have bought Telstra and it’s NBN operation to a standstill and that resulted in millions of homes and businesses being cut off instantly.
Cyber criminals which Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned Australians about last month can easily disrupt the vital computer systems of a business or Government with the aim of creating damage, death, and destruction.
Future wars will see hackers using computer code to attack an enemy’s infrastructure, fighting alongside troops using conventional weapons like guns and missiles.
What todays hackers did was penetrate Telstra’s network which in reality should have had some form of protection in place to stop any attacks.
At the least they should have had an early warning detection system to alert of an inbound attack, IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems) don’t cost an arm and a leg.
Telstra’s home broadband including NBN services were affected by the outage and it was particularly hard for those Victorian’s who were told the next day that they were set to face stage 4 restrictions due to the COVID-19 epidemic gripping the State.
Why I ask, in the past six months I’ve been witness to multiple advertisements for cyber security related courses and degrees. Some of which are government funded? I ask why are so many companies such as Telstra not prepared for attacks of this nature.
It’s time to wake up Australia.