Posts Tagged ‘hacking’

Australian small business websites hit by hackers in wake of spying scandal

Wednesday, November 6th, 2013
Photo credit; Eliot Phillips on Flickr

Photo credit; Eliot Phillips on Flickr

Hackers claiming links to international activist group Anonymous defaced dozens of websites belonging to Australian businesses recently.

A group calling itself Anonymous Indonesia posted on Twitter a list of more than 100 Australian sites it had hacked, saying the action was in response to reports of spying by Australia.

The websites were defaced with a message reading “Stop Spying on Indonesia” and are mainly owned by small Australian businesses. They seemed to have been chosen at random.

Australia has been implicated in spying by its role in a U.S.-led surveillance network.

Reports that the Australian embassy in Jakarta was being used for spying prompted Indonesia to summon the Australian ambassador last week. And China demanded an explanation from the United States after the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported Australian embassies across Asia were part of the U.S. operation.

To read more on this story, click here.

Small and medium businesses in Australia face cyber attack threat

Friday, October 18th, 2013
Photo credit; Mathieu Plourde on Flickr

Photo credit; Mathieu Plourde on Flickr

Cyber attacks hit 75% of small and medium sized businesses (SMB) last year, according to online security company McAfee, which says Australian businesses have been under concerted attacks online.

“There is a real imperative to better understand how to keep business assets safe — from data to devices, email and web,” says McAfee’s SMB Manager for Asia Pacific, Robbie Upcroft.

In its May State of Cybersecurity in Australian SMBs report, McAfee warned that almost half of SMBs in Australia had experienced a targeted attack in the past 12 months (44.5 per cent) with one in five (21 per cent) of this number experiencing three or more attacks.

And, in a worrying sign, McAfee found that just under half (46 per cent) of Australian SMBs indicated they had experienced security breach or data loss “by deliberate sabotage from current or ex-employees in the last year.”

To read more about this story, click here.