Australia’s spy chief says hackers linked to the Chinese government and military are targeting the country’s critical infrastructure, warning the country was increasingly at risk of “high-impact sabotage”.
Mike Burgess, head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), said “unprecedented levels of espionage” meant a growing threat of “cyber-enabled sabotage” in the next five years.
He singled out “one nation state – no prizes for guessing which one – conducting multiple attempts to scan and penetrate critical infrastructure in Australia” and its allies, “targeting water, transport, telecommunications, and energy networks”.
The Chinese embassy has been contacted for comment.
Authoritarian regimes were now more willing to “disrupt and destroy,” Burgess warned.
He cited two Chinese hacking groups, Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, who have targeted telecommunications companies in the US and Australia.
“These groups are hackers working for Chinese government intelligence and their military,” he told business leaders at a forum in Melbourne on Wednesday.
“Both groups were involved in the theft of sensitive information, but the real danger was the threat of sabotage – disruption to critical infrastructure.”
He said Salt Typhoon’s intent was espionage, breaking into telecommunication networks in the US.
“And they have been probing our telecommunication networks here in Australia too,” Burgess said.
He said Volt Typhoon’s actions were intended to be disruptive, with hackers compromising critical infrastructure networks in the US for potential, future sabotage.
“And yes, we have seen Chinese hackers probing our critical infrastructure as well,” Burgess said.
He warned that authoritarian regimes are increasingly willing to sabotage critical infrastructure in order to “impede decision-making, damage the economy, undermine war-fighting capability and sow social discord”.
“I do not think we – and I mean all of us – truly appreciate how disruptive, how devastating, this could be,” he said.
Burgess pointed out that short telecommunication outages, unrelated to foreign interference, have had significant and widespread impacts on society.
“That’s one phone network not working for less than one day,” he said.
“Imagine the implications if a nation-state took down all the networks? Or turned off the power during a heatwave? Or polluted our drinking water? Or crippled our financial system?”
Spies are increasingly “broadening their collection requirements”, Burgess said.
“They are aggressively targeting private sector projects, negotiations and investments that might give foreign companies a commercial advantage. And like criminals, they have been aggressively targeting customer data.”
The spy chief said conservative estimates showed that espionage cost Australia A$12.5bn ($8.2bn; £6.2bn) in 2023-24, with about $2bn worth of trade secrets and intellectual property stolen from Australian companies in one year.
