Donna Demaio: Australia Correspondent on the cyberattacks on Australia's big four banks

Australia’s big four banks have been hit with a raft of cyber-attacks. 

The systems of NAB, CommBank, ANZ, and Westpac were being hit every minute of every day, leaving customers increasingly vulnerable to scams. 

The attackers were trying to gain access to the banks’ computer systems, deny services to customers, use malicious code, or breach security logins. 

Australia Correspondent Donna Demaio told Mike Hosking that the banks say that they’ve spent a fortune trying to protect themselves from this, to a sum of about $3 billion a year. 

A few hours after, she said, quotes were released from Chris Sheehan calling it a type of warfare, saying that every person who uses one of the big four banks is at risk. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Done of the mayor is up early person and Australian
good morning to you, good morning. Were all the banks
under cyber attack?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is quite alarming. They have issued a warning. We
heard from a gentleman called Christian from their National Australia Bank,
the NAB, and he says that the Big four are
under attack constantly from these cyber attacks. And in his words,
every bank all the time is being bombarded by cyber
attacks every minute of every day and customers are increasingly

(00:31):
vulnerable to scams. Now what's happening. All these attackers are
trying to get into computer systems for instance, as we know,
deny services to customers, use malicious code, breach loggins, steal
information and money. So Christian told the ABC that the
entire community, every Australian that uses the banking services of
the Big four is at risk. He's called it a

(00:54):
war a type of warfare. In fact, you know, he's
saying like there's everything from the you know, the person
in his basement trying to steal money and so forth,
right up to these very sophisticated, ruthless crime groups that
are trying to hack and cyber attack the big bangs,
the banks say that's spent a fortune trying to protect

(01:16):
themselves from this, about three billion dollars a year. Now,
just a few hours later after this was you know,
these quotes were released from Christian Would you believe it?
The nab app and the internet banking all went out.
There were mass outages across Australia and thousands of Australians
couldn't get into their bank accounts and they were furious.

(01:38):
But thankfully that's all been reinstated overnight.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Good stuff. Now, what about this Melbourne airport thing? How widespread?
How bad is this?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh? Yes, well, Borderfalls has been honing in on aviation
workers and it's found that dozens of Melbourne Airport staff,
well they've been accused of working for organized criminals trying
to smuggle drugs into Australia. So the investigation found that
was a seventy staff at Melbourne Airport alone that breach
security checks over twelve months, and some are actually suspected

(02:07):
of working within organized crime, you know, distributing drugs allegedly,
but also engaged in illicit drug use. It's also been
alleged that international airline crew have been hiding illegal cigarettes
and tobacco in false bottom luggage and I can tell
you now Botaforce are continuing those investigations Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Donnald appreciate it. Donald to Mayo out of Australia on
this Tuesday morning eleventh. For more from News Talk sed B,
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