Australia’s Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) has uncovered an attack on a critical infrastructure operator’s network. State-sponsored actors had compromised the network and were preparing to sabotage it, according to its director general, Mike Burgess.

Other countries face similar cyber-threats to critical infrastructure.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the danger that the country is facing from cyberattacks on its infrastructure, he said, presenting ASIO’s annual threat assessment this week. “We categorize them into ‘threats to life’ and ‘threats to our way of life,’” he said.

In this case, the hackers had gained access to login details and passwords for active users of the networks, including the IT professionals guarding it. ASIO had set up a specific team to deal with the issue of cyber sabotage.

Australia isn’t alone in facing threats from the same state actors, Burgess said. “We struggle to find a single country in our region that has not been compromised by this state’s cyber apparatus.”

This meant that Australia is facing a persistent threat in the future, one that could have consequences for the way that the critical infrastructure is deployed and managed. “The biggest challenge is the cumulative one: in a degraded security environment defined by concurrent, cascading, compounding threats, when resources are limited, how and what do you prioritize?” he said.