Australia

A group of hackers identifying themselves as Johor Hacking Crew have defaced 30+ sites hosted by Melbourne company ServersInSeconds.com.au.

There appears to be no motive for the attack other than the fact the hackers spotted a vulnerability and decided to exploit it to dish out a lesson in security. That lesson was delivered as a scrolling defacement and a Pastebin dump listing the afflicted sites. The finger for the defacements was first pointed at Canberra company UberGlobal, as the servers reside on IP addresses an servers the company curates.

Julia Gillard has named "integrated cyber policy and operations" one of three key national security strategy priorities for the next five years. As part of this strategy we will see the establishment of the Australian Cyber Security Centre by the end of this year.

This is a commendable move, but should serve only as a first step in the government's efforts in cyberspace. Australia must lead the region in dealing with cyber warfare, cyber terrorism and cyber crime using our extensive technological capacity and existing regional relationships.

Pirate Party Australia hopes to field candidates in every state and territory after the party won the right to contest its first ever Australian election.

The Australian Electoral Commission confirmed the official registration of the party today, a process the party said it had "quietly" undertaken beginning late last year.

A leading Australian Internet service provider has pulled out of negotiations to create a warning notice scheme aimed at reducing online piracy. iiNet, the ISP that was sued by Hollywood after refusing to help chase down alleged infringers, said that it can’t make any progress with righthsolders if they don’t make their content freely available at a reasonable price. The ISP adds that holding extra data on customers’ habits is inappropriate and not their responsibility.

Russian hackers are holding a Gold Coast medical centre to ransom after encrypting thousands of patient health records.

The hackers are asking for a ransom of $4,000 to decrypt the sensitive information held on a server at the Miami Family Medical Centre.

The Australian government has now, after years of testing and preparing, formally abandoned a plan to filter its domestic Internet. Officials now say that it will use Interpol’s "worst of" child abuse site list as a way to shield Ozzies from truly awful content.

"Blocking the Interpol 'worst of' list will help keep children safe from abuse, it meets community expectations, and fulfills the Government's commitment to preventing Australian internet users from accessing child abuse material online," Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said on Friday, according to the Herald Sun.

Insurance providers have forecast a growing demand for cyber insurance products in Australia as the government moves to crack down on data breaches.

To date, cyber insurance products – covering breaches of privacy law, data loss and DDoS attacks – have attracted more than $500 million a year in premiums worldwide.

An Australian state public transport system has been cracked by a group of security researchers who were able to replicate cards to enable free travel.

Theo Juleene, Karla Brunett, Damon Stacey, and Dougall Johnston used flaws in the system's decades-old custom cryptographic scheme to access transport data and reproduce tickets.

Australia has been described as a "testing ground" for the now infamous IT security support scams following a raid in which US authorities seized $US188,000 ($183,936) in assets held by dozens of outed fraudsters.

Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) chief executive Chris Chapman said half of the 10,000 complaints it received in 2010 related to phone scams.

In a broadcast issued by DSD's Cyber Security Operations Centre, DSD has said that the new version of Apple's mobile operating system provides "notable security enhancements" that warrant the update, despite its acknowledgement that iOS 6 was still in evaluation.

"In particular, iOS 6 addresses a known vulnerability in Apple Mail's use of Data Protection on email attachments, which is unlikely to be retrospectively applied to iOS 5."