Hackers backed by the Chinese government were behind a state-sponsored cyber attack on New Zealand’s parliament in 2021, the Oceanian country’s spy agency said on Tuesday.
The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) detected malicious cyber activity affecting the parliamentary counsel office and parliamentary service, compromising parts of the networks in August 2021, the intelligence agency said.
Our analysis enabled us to confidently link the actor to the People’s Republic of China, specifically the Ministry of State Security, GCSB Director-General Andrew Clark said.
This is the first time we have attributed state-sponsored malicious cyber activity to the People’s Republic of China for intrusion into New Zealand government systems.
Clark said while information of a sensitive or strategic nature was not removed from the system, some information of a technical nature was.
The announcement came after similar accusations made against China by the United States and the United Kingdom on Monday and soon after New Zealand’s minister responsible for the GCSB, Judith Collins, on Tuesday backed the UK in a statement, while also revealing that the cyber attack on Wellington had been attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 40 (APT40).
This was the first attack on New Zealand’s democratic institutions Collins was aware of, she said, according to public broadcaster Radio New Zealand.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Wellington’s concerns about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese government against democratic institutions in both the UK and in New Zealand were conveyed directly to the Chinese government on Tuesday.
Foreign interference of this nature is unacceptable, and we have urged China to refrain from such activity in future. New Zealand will continue to speak out – consistently and predictably – where we see concerning behaviors like this, Peters said.
China’s embassy in Wellington said it has rejected outright such groundless and irresponsible accusations and have lodged serious démarches to New Zealand’s relevant authorities, expressing strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition.
Non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs is a fundamental principle of China’s diplomacy (…) We have never, nor will we in the future, interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including New Zealand, it added in a statement.
The revelations in New Zealand came a day after the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden announced that Chinese state-affiliated organizations and individuals were responsible for two malicious cyber campaigns targeting democratic institutions and parliamentarians.
No parliamentary accounts were successfully compromised, but the government summoned the Chinese ambassador and sanctioned a front company and two Advanced Persistent Threat 31 (APT31) members.
In New Zealand, legislation would be required for any sanctions to be laid. EFE
