security

To defuse another attack, Oz spies called foreign counterparts to tell them an op was a bust

Australia’s Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has established dedicated teams to counter nation-state attacks on critical infrastructure, the org’s director general Mike Burgess revealed yesterday.

“We discovered nation-state hackers had compromised the network of an Australian critical infrastructure provider,” Burgess said yesterday in remarks accompanying the release of ASIO’s annual threat assessment, a task it performs in its role as Australia’s equivalent to the FBI and MI5.

“ASIO assessed the hackers were preparing for sabotage. They weren’t planting ‘digital dynamite’ as such; they were mapping out the network and maintaining access so they could cripple it at a time of their choosing.”

“In this case, a state-sponsored group didn’t just achieve access to the Australian critical infrastructure provider, it successfully acquired credentials – login details and passwords – for active users of the networks, including the IT professionals guarding it,” he added.

Burgess said ASIO “identified, tracked and attributed the hack, and worked with the victim company and our security partners to remediate the compromise – work which is ongoing.”

“The scale of this activity – led by one nation-state in particular – is difficult to overstate,” he added, before saying Australia is not alone in facing such attacks. “We struggle to find a single country in our region that has not been compromised by this state’s cyber apparatus.”

He described cyber sabotage as “an evolving threat. I have established dedicated teams to counter it.”

Burgess also shared an example of espionage targeting Australia’s military to gain information about the AUKUS pact – the US/UK/Australia defense collaboration that will see The Land Down Under acquire nuclear submarines, and which also includes collaborations around information technology capability, and intelligence activities.

“A spy from a foreign intelligence service approached an Australian security clearance holder online, pretending to be from a consulting company,” Burgess revealed.

“The spy paid the official to write two reports on Australia’s relationship with our Pacific neighbours, and then, thinking he’d been hooked, offered money for inside information on AUKUS.”

The Australian official became suspicious, reported the incident and conducted interviews with ASIO during which Burgess said the spy agency “gained valuable insights into the foreign service’s information gaps and tradecraft.”

The Australian official even handed the money they were paid by the foreign spy to ASIO. “In effect, ASIO disrupted the foreign intelligence service’s operation and made them pay for it,” Burgess crowed.

ASIO then scored another win.

“My officers borrowed the phone from the official and rang the so-called consultant in her home country. Thinking it was her target, the spy picked up and got a very unwelcome surprise when she realised she was speaking to ASIO,” Burgess said.

“We demonstrated we knew exactly who she was, demanded she cease targeting Australian citizens, stated we have zero tolerance for spying on AUKUS, provided a quick overview of Australia’s espionage laws and pointed out the Director-General reserves the right to speak publicly about these matters. At that point the spy hung up.”

ASIO officers later mentioned this incident to members of the foreign intelligence service that ran the op.

Burgess seems to think that officers at that foreign agency may not have told their superiors about the op failing.

“In case they did not report it up – I’m confirming it now,” he said.

Burgess also pointed to abuse of online spaces continuing to represent a threat to Australia.

“Instead of being radicalised by associates in the real world, individuals are often being radicalised by strangers online,” he said. “Instead of being radicalised over months and years, individuals are increasingly being radicalised in weeks. Instead of being radicalised as adults, individuals are all too often being radicalised as minors. Instead of gathering in prayer halls or backyards, radicalised individuals are frequently gathering in encrypted chat rooms.”

“And, instead of spending time and resources planning sophisticated attacks, radicalised individuals are moving to low-capability attacks with little or no warning,” he said. “Traditional groups such as Islamic State and al-Qa’ida and their affiliates are growing their capability to conduct and inspire attacks, enabled both by permissive geographic and online spaces.”

Burgess revealed ASIO has “resolved” 14 “significant-terror related cases” since the December 2025 terror attack at Sydney’s Bondi beach, and 31 “major terrorism plots” since 2014.

He said ASIO is now “aggressively adopting new tools and techniques – including artificial intelligence – to navigate our security environment,” and invited Australians to work for the agency, perhaps as offensive hackers.

“All ASIO’s teams contribute to our mission and every ASIO officer makes a difference, whether you collect the dots or connect the dots, run cables or run sources, code networks or penetrate networks,” he said. ®