A cyberattack struck Australia’s Fire Rescue Victoria

December 26, 2022
Cyberattack Australia Fire Rescue Victoria FRV Network Disruption

On December 16, an Australian fire and rescue service, Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV), disclosed a cyberattack that shut down its network and forced it to operate manually. The cyberattack caused a widespread outage to the fire and rescue service’s IT systems that affected its emails, phones, and emergency dispatch systems that aid them in automating work.

FRV serves fire and rescue services to about 6.5 million people across Australia. After the cyberattack, the fire service continued to operate as usual but was forced to use manual workarounds, including pagers, radios, and mobile phones, to respond to urgent calls.

Furthermore, it took up to four days before Fire Rescue Victoria’s systems returned to normal. FRV’s acting commissioner also said additional staff was hired to ensure complete service delivery despite the security incident.

 

Fire Rescue Victoria was initially uncertain whether they were hit with a cyberattack.

 

The IT outage on Fire Rescue Victoria had not been immediately attributed to a cyberattack. However, security analysts determined that the incident affected the fire service’s emergency dispatch system, which forced them to shut down their network as a safety measure.

Researchers also consider a ransomware attack, although no ransom notes or demands from threat actors were found. For now, incident response teams have been deployed to deeply investigate the scope of the attack and get their systems back up and running as soon as possible.

Fire Rescue Victoria also assured the public that they are working around the clock to mitigate the incident and ensure it would not reoccur. The fire service had not shared further details and comments as of writing.

In the last fiscal year, Australia reported more than 76,000 cybercrime reports, which is a 13% increase versus the past year. This ratio was a challenge for the Australian government and companies, indicating a massive uptick in targeted attacks toward the country.

Thus, Australia’s data privacy protections are pushed to be enhanced in the coming times, with the government asserting several new directives to protect the country against cyberattacks.

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