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Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity
Fake online shops surge 250% ahead of Black Friday
Australians reported $259.5 million in scam losses during the first nine months of 2025, with online shopping fraud driving a sharp spike ahead of the looming Black Friday sales period. The National Anti-Scam Centre recorded 159,319 scam reports between January and September - a 16% jump in financial losses despite a 20% drop in overall reports compared to the same period last year. Shopping scams accounted for $8.6 million in losses from 9,628 reports, marking a 19% increase from 2024 and making it the most reported scam category involving financial loss. "Scammers love Black Friday sales too because they know shoppers are looking for bargains," ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe said. The warning comes as criminals exploit urgency and pressure during peak shopping periods, with fake websites, advertisements and mobile apps serving as the primary attack vector. Cybersecurity firm NordVPN detected a 250% increase in fake online shops in the run-up to Black Friday, with eBay imitations surging 525% in October compared to September. Amazon counterfeits jumped 232% over the same period, while the firm blocked 13.4 million attempts to access fraudulent sites in October alone - 381,000 per day. "Criminals create convi
Cybersecurity
What's behind the surge in cyberattacks on businesses?
Throughout 2025, companies like Jaguar Land Rover, Asahi, and Qantas have been compromised by cyberattacks. These attacks can have massive financial and technological consequences, often by stealing or locking businesses’ data in a bid to demand a ransom. Cyberattacks have also grown increasingly common, helped by cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and groups offering software and infrastructure to attackers. The Australian Cyber Security Centre responded to more than 1,200 cybersecurity incidents across the 2024-2025 fiscal year, rising 11%, and informed entities about possible malicious cybersecurity threats over 1,700 times. The average self-reported cost per cyberattack incident for Australian businesses surged by 50%.How much damage can a cyberattack cause?Many cyberattacks this year have caused major financial losses for companies, including halting production and deactivating technological systems. The Jaguar Land Rover hack had a UK£1.9 billion impact on the United Kingdom’s economy, the nonprofit Cyber Monitoring Centre estimated in October, and affected more than 5,000 organisations in the country. “This incident appears to be the most economically damaging cyber event to hit the U.K., with the vast maj
Cybersecurity
ASIO chief warns of Chinese threat to key infrastructure
The nation's top intelligence chief has warned that China is actively attempting to hack into Australian critical infrastructure and telco networks. ASIO director-general Mike Burgess, made the comments during an ASIC forum in Melbourne today, urging attendees and businesses in general to boost their security systems to help protect sensitive data as we enter an age of “strategic surprise and security fragility”. He stated that hacking attempts are already underway from Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon, backed by the Chinese state, and that this was not a future problem but happening right now. These groups have already launched campaigns against the U.S. on telco networks and critical infrastructure. “I have previously said we're getting closer to the threshold for high-impact sabotage…well, I regret to inform you — we're there now," Burgess told attendees. He did not name Beijing outright, but inferred heavily that that was who he believed to be behind this new era of cyber attacks, saying he was aware of "one nation state — no prizes for guessing which one — conducting multiple attempts to scan and penetrate critical infrastructure in Australia and other Five Eyes countries". These attacks have reportedly been a
Cybersecurity
Email attacks compromise 78% of organisations in 2025
Email breaches struck 78% of organisations worldwide in the past year, costing an average US$217,000 per incident to remediate, with Australian businesses facing a 48% uptick in attacks this year. Barracuda's newly released Email Security Breach Report surveyed 2,000 IT security decision-makers across nine countries and found 78% experienced an email security breach between April 2024 and May 2025, with 71% of those victims also getting hit with ransomware. Organisations taking over two hours to detect and contain an email breach were substantially more likely to face ransomware, with 64% of ransomware victims requiring extended remediation time. Average recovery costs hit $217,068 per breach, with smaller firms taking the worst beating. Companies with 50 to 100 employees paid $1,946 per employee to recover versus $243 per head for organisations with 1,000-2,000 staff. Detection speed matters: 58% of victims unaffected by ransomware detected breaches within an hour, compared to just 49% of those who also faced ransomware attacks.Inundated down underAustralian organisations have been hit harder than most, with claimed data breaches jumping 48% in 2025. Cyber researchers have recorded 71 breaches through to 3 Octob
Cybersecurity
Quantum computing threat scary, says Bullock
Financial institutions need to keep up with advances in quantum computing to protect Australians from fraud and scams, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Michelle Bullock said. Bullock said this fight would require further innovation, adaptation and cooperation by the payments industry because fraudsters would not stand still in their efforts to steal data and money. “One important example is the need to protect card users against advances in quantum computing, which is expected to result in current encryption standards being broken sometime in the future,” she said in a speech. “This requires migrating card payments to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a quantum-safe solution.” Answering questions after the speech, Bullock was asked if a quantum computer falling into the “wrong hands” was the biggest threat to the payments system. “Certainly it's something I worry about. If you believe what they say on the tin of quantum computing, what takes 200 years to decrypt now to break will take a matter of minutes. So it is a big threat,” Bullock said. Financial institutions used advanced encryption standards developed to meet the challenge of quantum computing to keep data safe, “but it's scary”. “So it is a wo

Cybersecurity
Stolen Qantas customer data flies onto the dark web
Qantas has revealed that stolen customer data has been released by cyber criminals. The Australian airline said it was investigating what data was released in the wake of the theft of 5.7 million customer records in July via a third-party platform. Most stolen records were name, email address and Frequent Flyer details, a smaller portion included business or home address, date of birth, phone number, gender and meal preferences but there were no credit card details, personal financial information or passport details. “There continues to be no impact to Qantas Frequent Flyer accounts. Passwords, PINs and login details were not accessed or compromised. The data that was stolen is not enough to gain access to these frequent flyer accounts,” Qantas said in a statement. The airline has an ongoing injunction through the NSW Supreme Court to prevent the stolen data being accessed, viewed, released, used, transmitted or published by anyone, including third parties. “We have also put in place additional security measures, increased training across our teams and strengthened system monitoring and detection since the incident occurred,” it said. Qantas advised all affected customers in July of the types of data in the impac
Cybersecurity
Trump calls on Microsoft to fire global affairs head
United States President Donald Trump has called for Microsoft to fire its global affairs president Lisa Monaco, calling her a “menace to U.S. National Security” due to her work for previous Democratic administrations. Monaco joined Microsoft in May. She was formerly a deputy attorney general during the Joe Biden administration and a national security aide during the Barack Obama administration, with Trump criticising her direction of investigations into his conduct. “Monaco has been shockingly hired as the President of Global Affairs for Microsoft, in a very senior role with access to Highly Sensitive Information. Monaco’s having that kind of access is unacceptable, and cannot be allowed to stand,” wrote Trump on Truth Social. “She is a menace to U.S. National Security, especially given the major contracts that Microsoft has with the United States Government,” he wrote. “It is my opinion that Microsoft should immediately terminate the employment of Lisa Monaco.” Microsoft has yet to comment. Trump has repeatedly criticised Monaco for Department of Justice probes into his conduct, saying in 2023 that she was among “the Radical Left Zealots and Thugs who have been working illegally for years to ‘take me down’”. She
Cybersecurity
ASPI argues Australia needs to improve research security
A new study published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has found that Australia needs to improve its ‘research security’. The report was written by a senior law lecturer from Southern Cross University, Brendan Walker-Munro who said that while Australia made great strides in 2018 in terms of espionage and foreign interference, more needed to be done to keep up with more sophisticated adversaries. “Australia still lacks a clear, consistent national definition of ‘research security’ – a gap that has bred confusion, resistance and fatigue across the university and research sectors,” Walker-Munro said. “For many, security remains synonymous with red tape, rather than resilience.” Walker-Munro argues that the threats we face today are deliberate efforts to insert malicious insiders, target researchers through transnational repression, exploit data and cyber vulnerabilities, and manipulate legal frameworks through lawfare as opposed to data stealing or relationship cultivation. The current measures include introducing policy and legislative reforms aimed at protecting the research sector, and Walker-Munro said these should be considered as early steps. ASPI’s recent analysis argues that Australia’s re
Cybersecurity
Pro-Israeli hacking group responsible for $90m heist
An Israeli anti-Iranian hacking group has claimed a US$90 million heist on an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange. The group known as Gonjeshke Darande or Predatory Sparrow claimed on X to have destroyed data at Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah amid increasing hostilities between Israel and Iran. According to blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, the money was sent from Nobitex wallets to hacker addresses. “The cyberattack on Nobitex was because it is a tool for financing terrorism and violating sanctions,” the group posted to X. “Association with such institutions will put your assets on the path to destruction.” Instead of pocketing $90 million worth of cryptocurrency, the hackers burned the funds to send a political message. “While we don’t expect to find strong technical links between Israel and Predatory Sparrow, the actions of the group align strongly with Israel’s regional priorities. You'd be hard pushed to find another candidate country in the region with the capability to perform these attacks,” director of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, Rafe Pilling told the Guardian. Blockchain addresses or locations that record how much someone has are randomly generated strings of numbers and letters