AusAlert: A vital readiness tool, or a juicy target for nation-state hackers?

The fact that this will even happen on devices set to “silent” and “do not disturb” has raised concerns, particularly from domestic and family violence services.

Karen Bentley, the CEO of the national peak domestic violence body Wesnet, said that anyone relying upon a hidden device to keep themselves safe in dangerous situations should set that device to airplane mode so it doesn’t pick up the alert.

“Once the national emergency alert system is officially in place from October, people using hidden phones, as part of a safety plan, will need to make their own decision about the risks of having their phones on, on a permanent basis or whether it’s safer for them to keep their hidden phones off when they’re not in use,” Bentley said.

And while those concerns are most certainly valid, the importance of such a national system will, according to Jason Pearce, field CTO for the Asia-Pacific and Japan region at Claroty, also make it a target for malicious cyber activity.

“Intelligence officials have recently revealed that Australia is facing an unprecedented volume of cyber threats. Furthermore, our critical infrastructure networks have already been compromised by state-sponsored actors pre-positioning for sabotage,” Pearce recently told Cyber Daily.

“With the upcoming launch of Australia’s national emergency warning system, AusAlert, government departments must ensure that every layer of the system is secure – from the platforms emergency services use to authorise and issue alerts, through to the telco networks that deliver them.”

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Pearce said warning systems such as AusAlert sit at a “unique intersection of critical infrastructure, government capability and the public trust”. As such, they represent an attractive target for nation-state actors seeking to erode public confidence and for cyber criminals seeking to leverage the system’s importance – attacks Claroty has seen elsewhere in the world.

“These attacks expose the vulnerability of public warning systems and represent a dangerous escalation in cyber-psychological warfare in conflict,” Pearce said.

“Any system of national significance, like AusAlert, can and will be a target for cyber criminals seeking to cause disruption. There are many plausible scenarios in which this could occur, for example: hackers may use sophisticated phishing attacks, malware, or credential stuffing to steal the login details of authorised government employees and launch a false alarm. Just last month, cyber criminals hijacked Brazil’s Civil Defense alert system by stealing government employee credentials, waking up millions of citizens in the middle of the night with a fake ‘extreme’ alert.”

According to Pearce, maintaining the integrity of a system such as AusAlert requires defence-in-depth: strong network segmentation, identity and access management, and continuous monitoring.

“This goes far beyond safeguarding circuits and fibre optic networks – it’s about preserving public trust and protecting human lives when every minute counts,” he said.