Hackers stayed hidden for nine months on a server holding customer information for a Queensland water supplier, illustrating the need of better cyberdefenses for critical infrastructure.
SunWater is Australian government-owned water supplier responsible for operating 19 major dams, 80 pumping stations, and 1,600 miles long pipelines.
According to the annual financial audit report that was published by the Queensland Audit Office yesterday, SunWater was breached for nine months, with the actors remaining undetected the entire time.
While the report doesn't name the entity directly,
ABC Australia questioned the authority and confirmed it was SunWater.
The breach occurred between August 2020 and May 2021, and the actors managed to access a webserver used to store cutomer information by the water supplier.
It appears that the hackers weren't interested in the exfiltration of sensitive data, as they instead just planted a custom malware to increase visitor traffic to an online video platform.
The
audit report mentions that there is no evidence that the threat actors stole any customer or financial information, and the vulnerability the actors used has now been fixed.