HACKERS are launching 200 attacks a month on the Defence Department's computer networks, the Defence Minister, John Faulkner, revealed as he unveiled a new centre to co-ordinate the nation's response to online threats.
Journalists were allowed into the Defence Signals Directorate yesterday for the first time since its creation in 1947. The occasion was the opening of the Cyber Security Operations Centre.
The centre, which will cost $14 million a year to run when fully operational, is partly a product of last year's Defence white paper, which highlighted the growing threat of electronic warfare. Its centrepiece, ''The Pit'', resembles a movie set, with three rows of computer terminals overseen at one end by giant screens and at the other by a bank of computers on a raised platform, surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped mezzanine.
Digital clocks show the time in the capitals of the nation's closest allies - Washington, London, Ottawa and Wellington - while signs display messages to motivate staff: ''Reveal Their Secrets - Protect Our Own,'' says one. ''Operate in the slim area between difficult and impossible,'' reads another.
The centre is being opened at a time of heightened interest in cyber security after the internet giant Google threatened to abandon China, citing attacks on the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. More than 30 other US companies, including Adobe, Yahoo! and Symantec, have reportedly fallen victim to attacks and last year the FBI tracked more than 90,000 attacks on the US Defence Department. The attacks were said to have originated in China.
Senator Faulkner said cyber attacks were a worsening global problem. ''Cyber intrusions on government, critical infrastructure and other information networks are a real threat to Australia's national security and national interests.''
Defence, he said, had investigated about 200 electronic security incidents on its own network a month in 2009. ''Defence effectively responded to these activities and I can say that no operations to date were disrupted due to network intrusion.''
The directorate also responded to about 220 incidents reported by other Australian government agencies last year. Senator Faulkner would not be drawn on a suggestion that many cyber attacks originated in China.
''There is some evidence that electronic intrusion of Australian Government sites has been conducted from overseas but I stress that the nature of the internet makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to attribute those attacks to exact sources.
The centre will employ about 130 information technology experts, engineers and analysts from the directorate.
Senator Faulkner would not be drawn on whether Australia had also launched cyber attacks. ''I am not prepared to address the issue of Defence's cyber activities or capabilities,'' he said.
''I will not do that … I will not be placed in a position … where I would jeopardise Australia's national security.''