An Australian defence think tank rubbishes Chinese claims that it is the only organisation suggesting China is behind cyber attacks on Australia, saying: “It really doesn’t stand up to much in the way of serious scrutiny.”

An Australian defence think tank has rubbished Chinese claims that it is the only organisation suggesting China is behind cyber attacks on Australia.

• Peter Jennings said China’s claim that ASPI was behind the hacking claims was “laughable nonsense”
• China also tried to discredit the organisation by revealing they received funding from Australian defence industry.
• There had been “a significant number of new attacks which have not yet been frankly – and may never be publicly – reported”

Yesterday Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a foreign government was responsible for increasing cyber attacks on Australian governments and institutions, but did not name the country he believed was responsible.
However, Federal Government agencies believe China is the nation responsible.
On Friday evening China’s foreign ministry denied the communist country was to blame, and said the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank was the only organisation pointing to China.
“We’ve pointed out many times, this institute has long been receiving funding from US arms companies, and the attacks coming from the institute are completely baseless”, said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian.
On Saturday ASPI’s executive director Peter Jennings described the Chinese claim as “laughable nonsense”.
“It really doesn’t stand up to much in the way of serious scrutiny,” he said.
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Mr Jennings said ASPI’s recent research on China’s use of Uighur prisoners as forced labour and the country’s United Work Front department, responsible for pushing Chinese propaganda around the world, had made Chinese leaders “extremely” uncomfortable.
He said that may have been why ASPI was singled out this time, and said he believed there had been “a significant number of new [cyber] attacks which have not yet been frankly and may never be publicly reported”.
“On the one hand, what we have over a period of years are very consistent Chinese interests in hacking our Parliament, which they did in 2011, the Bureau of Meteorology in 2016, the Australian National University in 2018.
“They are just the ones which found their way into the public realm.
“Beyond that, China is acting to infiltrate Parliament, political parties, government departments and businesses all the time.
“What is new, and I think what led to the Government’s press release yesterday, is that there is now a much higher intensity of that Chinese effort, which has come about mostly since the COVID virus.
“I think it’s just become so substantial, so overwhelming, that the Government felt it necessary to go out yesterday to say what it did and to warn Australian businesses, in particular, that you need to get your cyber security up to standard if you are not to become subject to these attacks.”
ASPI was established by the Federal Government in 2001 and on its website it states that it is “partially funded” by the Department of Defence.
The think tank’s “sponsors” include defence industry organisations such as Lockheed Martin, Thales and MBDA Missile Systems.
Mr Jennings said the defence industry played “an enormously important part in Australian security”.
“If you don’t support the Australian defence industry, effectively what you are doing is wanting the Australian Defence Force to be disarmed,” he said.
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Mr Jennings said top-level Chinese leaders wanted to understand the “political intent and political thinking” of Australian leaders and the country also had an interest in intellectual property theft.
Last year ASPI published a report alleging that popular video app TikTok was “a vector for censorship and surveillance” in China.
It has also published research into the global and Australian connections of Global Tone Communication (GTCOM), a global data-mining company majority-owned by the Chinese Government.
Four Corners and Background Briefing revealed in October 2019 that GTCOM had signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of New South Wales to test its technology.