A sweep of the Australian telecommunications sector for vulnerabilities or evidence of a coordinated campaign following the Optus breach had not uncovered anything of major concern, cyber security minister Clare O’Neil said Sunday.
O’Neil said that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) had been working “broadly across the telecommunications sector” since Optus’ disclosure of a large-scale data breach last month.
“I have advised previously that the ASD is working with other Australian telecommunications providers,” she said.
“This is really important because what we’ll often see around the world is cyber security breaches come in sets, and we are doing a lot of work with telecommunications providers to ensure that their networks are free of vulnerabilities and that work is progressing very well.”
O’Neil said that the sweep had not uncovered “any evidence” of a broader campaign against Australian telcos, nor of the presence of particularly critical vulnerabilities.
“There isn't any evidence of that at this stage,” she said.
“I’m not reporting on any additional vulnerabilities or breaches that they’ve found.”
O’Neil, together with government services minister Bill Shorten, on Sunday called on Optus to be more transparent about how many customers had identity credentials exposed in the breach, with a breakdown by identity document type.
She also said Optus needed to do more to contact 10,200 customers whose details were published to the internet by the alleged attacker.
