RMIT expert available for comment on Australia’s preparation for Russia’s cyber-attacks

An expert from RMIT University is available to talk about the potential effects of Australian Government’s decision to punish Russia with sanctions in response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

The Australian Government has now issued warnings to Australian organisations to protect their systems against possible Russian cyber-attacks.

Professor Matt Warren 

(0432 745 171 or matthew.warren2@rmit.edu.au)

Topics: cyber security; information security; cyber warfare; critical infrastructure protection; historical and current cyber-attacks against Ukraine

“Russian cyber-attacks are a form of power projection and will be the way the Russians try to punish Australia for our political stance.

“These attacks will potentially impact all aspects of Australian society and will test our ability to protect against cyber-attacks at this scale.

“The threat to Australia is not just to Australian organisations, but also to all tiers of governments, all Australian organisations and individual Australians.

“The Russian cyber-attacks take may appear in a number of forms including:

• Denial-of- service attacks: a cyber-attack in which the attacker seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable by flooding the site with date
• Website defacement: hacking web pages and replacing with an alternative web page usually with a political message
• Ransomware: infecting organisations with malware that spreads across the system and locks down the system until a ransom (usually in bitcoin is paid)
• Hacking: stealing information that is either publicly disclosed or sold via the darknet.

“The attacks will be undertaken either by parts of the Russian Government, APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) hacking groups acting on behalf of the Russian Government or by patriotic hacking groups / militia (as in the 2007 cyber-attacks on Estonia).”

Matthew (Matt) Warren is the Director of the RMIT University Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation and a Professor of Cyber Security at RMIT University. He is a researcher in the areas of Cyber Security and Computer Ethics.  

For general media enquiries, contact RMIT Communications: 0439 704 077 or news@rmit.edu.au