Ten out of 1000 Australians directly received messages from a hacker. This incident took place right after the hacker invaded the emergency warning system, used by the government.
This trespass through the Early Warning Network (EWN) took place when the culprit sent some text through messages and e-mail on Saturday. The receivers got the text in their phone which read, “EWN has been hacked. Your data is not safe. We are trying to fix the security issues.”
The message received, caused the users to email a provided address if they were willing to roll back from the service.
The local, state and federal governments used the EWN. This enabled the government to alert Australians to the extremities as well as to the urgent situations. The government’s database clings to the email addresses as well as mobile and home phone numbers of the user.
There was a link attached in the hacker’s message that offered customer support. However, there is no clarity whether the breach was a phishing attempt.
EWN confirmed that the action was set in motion from within Australia. Company’s managing director Kerry Plowright told that the attack’s motive was to make the business suffer. The illegal access on “compromised login details” was to be blamed here.
The EWN did not shut down its systems while the hacker had control of their system, which, the local, state and federal government warning systems were affected by this incident. It was solely because the EWN systems did not come to a halt while the hackers were extending his dominance over them.
Dave Lacey, who runs MEDICARE, national identity and cyber support service told that such attacks are turning common. The hackers are successfully able to recognise the shortcomings in the security and hence are easily able to access personal information.