ASIO blueprints stolen by Chinese hackers - or were they?

Adding even more ambiguity to the ASIO building blueprint hack story that first surfaced last week, Australian national security officials have denied reports that building plans for ASIO’s new headquarters were stolen by Chinese hackers.

The story first broke when the ABC’s Four Corners reported last Monday that someone had stolen blueprints for ASIO’s new headquarters, as well as information on its communications cabling, server locations, floor plans and security systems.

“The plans were traced to a server in China,” Four Corners reporter Andrew Fowler said.

The theft is one reason for a delay in ASIO moving into the new building, the ABC reported.

Such a theft would have implications for Australia’s national security. Desmond Ball, a Professor at ANU’s Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, told the program: “Once you get those building plans you can start constructing your own wiring diagrams, where the linkages are through telephone connections, through Wi-Fi connections, which rooms are likely to be the ones that are used for sensitive conversations, how to surreptitiously put devices into the walls of those rooms or into the roofings above those rooms.”

With construction on the facility nearly completed, ASIO would be faced with accepting this threat and practising “utmost sensitivity even within [its] own headquarters”, or scrapping the building altogether and starting again.

Mark Dreyfus, Australian Attorney General, declined to give a comment to Four Corners.

Later in the week, Prime Minister Julia Gillard told Parliament that the Four Corners report was “inaccurate” and contained “unsubstantiated allegations”.

Neither Dreyfus nor the director-general of ASIO “intends to comment further on these inaccurate reports in accordance with the long-standing practice of both sides of politics not to comment on very specific intelligence matters”, Gillard said.

Senator Christine Milne, leader of the Australian Greens party, called for an independent inquiry into the project.

Sky News reported that shadow attorney-general George Brandis - who had received an ASIO briefing on the matter - said there had been a breach.

But Sky’s quotes from Brandis seem vague, in terms of how much of the original ASIO breach story they confirm.

“These events did take place some time ago ... They were dealt with by ASIO,” Sky quotes Brandis as saying.

Brandis said that Gillard was wrong to dismiss the Four Corners program’s accuracy.

“The prime minister in question time dismissed the report entirely as being inaccurate and that claim by the prime minister is false,” he said.

The ABC took these comments - vague as they may be - as confirmation of the Four Corners report that ASIO was successfully targeted by Chinese hackers.

Then, on Thursday, ASIO director-general David Irvine said he could neither confirm nor deny that the breach occurred.

“We incur all sorts of risks if intelligence operation matters are aired in public,” he told a Senate estimates committee hearing.

“Can I just assure you though that I am satisfied that the security of the ASIO building is and will be meeting the very, very high standards that are required of a building of that nature,” he said.

And finally, in the latest development, Australian national security officials have denied that classified plans of ASIO’s new building were stolen by Chinese hackers.

Furthermore, these officials said the opposition was in fact informed of this in a security briefing.

The officials said in 2009 and 2010, there were attempted cyber intrusions against contractors involved in the ASIO headquarters building project. The malware used in these attacks targeted building drawings and schematics.

But the attempted hacking was not successful in obtaining sensitive classified information, Fairfax reported.

“This was one of many attempts to obtain sensitive Australian government information, most likely by Chinese intelligence services but there was no compromise,” Fairfax quoted an anonymous security official as saying.

Fairfax also reported that Brandis and opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop were told the attempted cyberattack against the contractor was unsuccessful, and there had been no compromise of the security of the new ASIO headquarters.

Despite this, the ABC is sticking by its story and has refused to name its source.