China Blamed For Attack On Australian Bureau of Meteorology (abc.net.au)

New submitter ElectronF sends news that officials within the Australian government are blaming China for an attack on computer systems at the Bureau of Meteorology. "The bureau owns one of Australia's largest supercomputers and provides critical information to a host of agencies. Its systems straddle the nation, including one link into the Department of Defence at Russell Offices in Canberra." China has denied involvement, saying, "We have stressed that cyber security needs to be based on mutual respect. We believe it is not constructive to make groundless accusations or speculation." The Bureau's systems are still fully operational, though officials say the breach will require significant investment to recover from.

Comments

Re:Attacking the *Met* Office?

[Nutria]

Guess you didn't read the article.

This is /. Why would you expect that I RTFA?

Re:Flabbergasted

[AmiMoJo]

Respect != trust. What they mean is that people shouldn't make wild, unfounded allegations without hard evidence because it creates a chilling effect and prevents cooperation. Imagine if the attack did originate from China, but from an individual or criminal group rather than the government. Having accused the Chinese government of hacking every other Tuesday for the past decade, how likely are they to now help track the real culprits down?

It also screws up the import/export market, because everyone assumes all Huwawei gear has Chinese government backdoors and all Cisco gear has US government backdoors. That may actually be true, but the point that endlessly repeating it to damage the other side is, well, damaging, stands up.