THE HON MARK DREYFUS QC MP
Attorney-General
Minister for Emergency Management
Special Minister of State
Minister for the Public Service and Integrity
MINISTER CONGRATULATES AFP ON HACKING INVESTIGATION
The Attorney-General and acting Minister for Home Affairs and Justice, Mark Dreyfus, has today congratulated the Australian Federal Police (AFP) on the arrest of the self-proclaimed leader of hacking group Lulz Security (Lulzsec).
I commend the AFP on their ongoing efforts to disrupt cyber criminals, a crime type that is becoming increasingly prevalent as technologies evolve, Mr Dreyfus said.
The AFP investigation began earlier this month, when investigators from the AFP Cyber Crime Operations team identified a government website that had been compromised.
Mr Dreyfus said the AFPs announcement today sends the message that attacking and defacing government infrastructure will not be tolerated.
The AFP and other Australian law enforcement authorities will continue to pursue hackers who attempt to damage or destroy Australian individuals, companies and national infrastructure resources, Mr Dreyfus said.
The impairment or disruption of communications to, or from computer networks can have serious consequences. The Australian public should take this as a reminder that cyber security is of crucial importance in the online environment.
Organisations should also be aware of Defence Signals Directorates top four mitigation strategies to protect their ICT systems, he said.
These include:
- Application whitelisting - A technical measure which only allows specifically authorised applications to run on a system. This helps prevent malicious software and unauthorised applications running.
- Patching systems - A small piece of software designed to fix problems or update a computer program.
- Restricting administrative privileges - Minimising administrative privileges makes it more difficult for the adversary to spread or hide their existence on a system.
- Using the latest versions of operating systems.
WEDNESDAY, 24 APRIL 2013
